That night, their mission sounded simple enough:
to spy on a secret meeting between someone inside the Medang palace and a courier from the Yi Dynasty.
Location: the ruins of an old temple deep in the forbidden forest—
a place where three frogs were said to croak in chorus,
and an old woman's ghost supposedly played congklak every Friday night under a blood moon.
But Sri wasn't afraid of frogs.
Or ghosts.
What she feared most…
was Chen.
Specifically: Chen when he talks too much.
"We stay silent. We observe. We attack only if needed."
Sri whispered sharply as they reached the west side of the temple.
She wore plain dark clothes with no official insignia, her hair tied high, her expression cold enough to kill—likely even her own teammate—if he made a sound.
"Don't worry, Senapati," Chen replied, crouching beside her with ease.
"I'll be as quiet as morning dew on a lotus leaf."
Sri narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
But she chose to focus on the sounds around them—
the faint shuffle of feet, rustling leaves… and was that a rat?
Three minutes of silence.
Suddenly—
BOOM!!
A cloud of smoke exploded from behind a bush.
Chen, now stumbling backward and coughing, looked—embarrassingly—proud of himself.
His foot had snagged on a thick root, pulling what turned out to be an enemy trap line.
The guards meeting in the middle of the ruins snapped into alert.
Torchlight flared. Swords were drawn.
These weren't just random scouts.
"Morning dew, huh?" Sri hissed, without turning.
"It was dew… now it's a damn monsoon," Chen wheezed, still patting his clothes and coughing.
Sri had no choice.
With a sharp hand signal, three shadow troops from Medang's western flank leapt into formation.
Sri was the first to strike—
a storm in human form, slipping through stone cracks and branches with lethal precision.
"Wait—you gave the attack signal? Already?!" Chen whispered, panicked.
Sri didn't answer.
She was already gone, plunging into the dark.
Chaos erupted.
Steel clashed.
The ground trembled.
Torches roared wild in the wind.
Bushes thrashed as shadows lunged and fought.
Sri moved like a tiger's shadow—silent, swift, and deadly.
She dropped two armed men with a single sweep of her leg.
Her dagger danced through the air, gleaming under flashes of local smoke bombs that hadn't yet cleared.
One blow nearly caught her face—she spun, parried, but the next slash tore through her shoulder and chest plating.
Armor ripped.
Hair came loose.
Eyes blazed.
Torchlight shimmered across the strands of Sri's hair, now untied and flowing like a night-shaded sash.
Her chest guard, though still intact, had slipped—just enough to trigger a catastrophic reaction in one specific creature known as Chen.
Chen froze.
Amid the flickering torchlight, swirling smoke, and crashing footsteps,
he watched Sri pivot—elbow a man's jaw, spin mid-air, then drop another with a knee strike so graceful it deserved to be replayed in every sane man's dream.
Her hair flowed like ink in a storm.
Sweat traced delicate lines down her temple.
Blood dripped from her arm.
But her eyes—her eyes remained razor sharp.
And in Chen's eyes…
Sri no longer looked like a general.
She looked like the most beautiful curse history ever carved.
"Oh my god…" Chen whispered, breath caught in his throat.
"The goddess of Medang…"
"FOCUS!!" Sri roared, kicking an enemy straight into a pile of rubble.
But it was too late.
Chen, utterly spellbound by everything he absolutely should not be thinking about during a mission, looked up—
and saw magnolia petals falling from the tall old tree above the ruins.
One. Two. Three.
Soft. Beautiful. Dramatic.
And of course, Chen's brain—meant to be calculating escape routes—
decided now was the perfect time… for a stupid idea.
He gently picked up a petal between his fingers, smiled like the lead actor of some tragic village romance, and tiptoed toward Sri.
Just as she was about to spin and strike an enemy behind her—
Chen appeared.
And scattered the flower petals…
in her face.
"A humble offering… from my heart."
Sri froze for half a second.
"WHAT?!"
The petals stuck to her brow. Her eyes. Her nose.
She tried to swat them away, but her vision was already blurred.
Focus—shattered.
Her parry missed.
Her weapon dropped.
An enemy in front of her raised his sword.
In that instant, Sri made the fastest strategic decision of her entire military career:
She grabbed Chen—
And threw him at the attacker.
"AAAAAA—wait this isn't in the diplomatic handbook—BOOM!!"
Chen crashed into two men at once, knocking them over like bowling pins.
One enemy was knocked out cold—Chen's knee landing square on his nose.
Chen also blacked out.
But with a weirdly elegant, half-splayed-out position…
Like a crab who'd lost its way.
Three minutes later.
Reinforcements arrived from the east, led by two of Medang's elite guards.
The enemies fled into the forest, leaving behind smoke, flower petals, and one Chen—
laid out peacefully on the ground like a failed ritual sacrifice.
Sri stood with heavy breaths, wounds on her arm and shoulder.
And Chen?
Chen lay at her feet, still wearing a faint smile.
Two days later.
Chen woke up in his chamber, gasping, chest wrapped in bandages.
"Sri… where's Sri? Is she safe? Did she… hold my hand? Did she carry me back?"
Mei Lin, sitting by the window reading a letter, stifled a laugh.
"Your Highness passed out looking like an overturned crab."
"But she did bring me back, didn't she?"
"Only because you were blocking the escape route and she had to leap over you."
Chen went quiet.
Then suddenly jumped out of bed—still limping—and ran to find Sri.
He found her in the training yard, hurling spears at the target with an intensity that was half anger, half repressed trauma.
THWACK!!
One spear nearly clipped his shoulder.
"WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING WITH THOSE FLOWERS?!"
"It was… a gesture," Chen said quietly, still hoping for a sliver of romance.
"THAT WAS WAR!!"
"Yes… an internal war.
Brought on by your beauty—shining through the blood and the dust."
THWACK!!
The next throw knocked Chen straight to the ground.
But he chuckled softly.
"She hit me.
That's affection.
I know it is."
From afar, Han Yue—busy tying bamboo poles for the barracks fence—sighed deeply.
"If my life were a novel, the genre would be tragicomedy."