The wide doors of my balcony were open, as well as the one to the hallway, and my room was filled with the warm, sweet air blowing in from the gardens. I had hoped the soft breezes would be consolation for the fact that I had so much work to do. Instead they distracted me, making me ache to be anywhere but stuck at my desk.

I sighed and reclined in my seat, letting my head drape over the back of the chair. “Summer,” I called.

“Yes, miss?” my head maid answered from the corner where she was sewing. Without looking, I knew that Venus and Sunny, my other two maids, had perked up, waiting to see if they could serve me as well.

“I command you to figure out what this report means,” I said, pointing a lazy arm at the detailed account on military statistics that sat in front of me. It was a task that all the Elite would be tested on, but I could not bring myself to focus on it.

My three maids laughed, probably from both the ridiculousness of my demand and the fact that I had issued on at all. I would not have called leadership of my strong suits.

“I’m sorry, my lady, but I think that might be overstepping my boundaries,” Summer answered. Even though my request was a joke and her answer was, too, I could hear the genuine apology in her voice for not being able to help me.

“Fine.” I moaned, heaving myself into an upright position. “I will simply have to do it myself. The whole lot of you are worthless, I’m getting new maids tomorrow. This time I meant it.”

They all chuckled again, and I focused on the numbers one more time. I was getting the impression that this was a bad report, but I could not be sure. I reread paragraphs and charts, furrowing my brow and biting the back of my pen as I tried to concentrate.

I heard Sunny laugh quietly, and I looked up to see what she was so amused by, following her eyes to the door. There, leaning against the frame, was Luhan.

“You gave me away!” he complained to Sunny, who continued to snicker.

I pushed back my chair in a rush and ran into his arms. “You read my mind!”

“Did I?”

“Please tell me we can go outside. Just for a little while?” He smiled. “I have twenty minutes before I have to be back.”

I pulled him down the hall, the excited chatter of my maids fading behind us. There was no denying the gardens had become our place. Almost every chance we got to be alone, we came out here. It was such a stark contrast to how I used to spend my time with Kris: holed up in the tiny tree house in my backyard, the only place we could be together safely.

Suddenly I wondered if Kris was around somewhere, indistinguishable from the numerous guards in the palace, watching as Luhan held my hand.

“What are these?” Luhan asked, brushing across the tips if my fingers as we walked.

“Calluses. They are from pressing down on violin strings four hours a day.”

“I have never noticed them before.”

“Do they bother you?” I was the lowest caste of the six girls left, and I doubted any of them had hands like mine.

Luhan stopped moving and lifted my fingers to his lips, kissing the tiny, worn tips.

“On the contrary. I find them rather beautiful.” I felt myself blush. “I have seen the world – admittedly mostly through bullet proof glass of from the tower of some ancient castle – but I have seen it. And I have to access to the answers of a thousand questions at my disposal. But this small hand here?” He looked deeply into my eyes. “This hand makes sound incomparable to anything I have ever heard. Sometimes I think I only dreamed that I heard you play the violin, it was so beautiful. These calluses are proof that it was real.”

At times the way he spoke to me was overwhelming, too romantic to believe. But though I cherished the words in my heart, I was never completely sure I could trust them. How did I know he was not saying such sweet things to the other girls? I had to change the subject.

“Do you really have the answers to a thousand questions?”

“Absolutely. Ask me anything; and if I don’t know the answer, I knew where we can find it.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

It was tough to come up with a question on the spot, much less one that would stump him, which was what I wanted. I took a moment to think of the things I had been most curious about when I was growing up. How planes flew. What the New Asia used to be like. How the tiny music players that the upper castes had worked.

And then it hit me.

“What is Halloween?” I asked.

“Halloween?” Clearly, he had never heard of it. I was not surprised. I had only seen the word once myself in an old history book my parents had. Some parts of the book were tattered beyond recognition, with pages missing or mostly destroyed. Still, I was always fascinated by the mention of a holiday we knew nothing about.

“Not so certain now, Your Royal Smartness?” I teased.

He made a face at me though it was clear he was only playing at being annoyed. He checked his watch and in a breath.

“Come with me. We have to hurry,” he said, grabbing my hand and launching himself into a run.

I stumbled a bit in my little heels, but I kept pretty well as he led me back to the palace with a huge grin on his face. I loved when Luhan’s carefree side came through; too often he was so serious.

“Gentlemen,” he said as we raced past the guards by the door.

I made it halfway down the hall before my shoes got the better of me. “Luhan, stop!” I gasped. “I can’t keep up!”

“Come on, come on, you’re going to love this,” he complained, tugging my arm as I slowed. He finally eased back to my pace but was obviously itching to move faster.

We headed towards the north corridor, near the area where a movie has been filmed here, but ducked into a stairwell before we got that far. We went up and up, and I could not contain my curiosity.

“Where are we going exactly?”

He turned and faced me, immediately serious. “You have to swear never to reveal this little chamber. Only a few members of the family and a handful of the guards even know it exists.”

I was beyond intrigued. “Absolutely.”

We reached the top of stairs, and Luhan held open the door for me. He took my hand again and pulled me down the hallway, finally stopping in front of a wall that was mostly covered by a magnificent painting. Luhan looked behind us to make sure no one was there, then reached behind the frame on the far side. I heard a faint click, and the painting swung toward us.

I gasped. Luhan grinned.

Behind the painting was a door that did not go all the way to the ground and had a small keypad on it, like the kind on a telephone. Luhan punched in a few numbers and then a tiny beep sounded. He turned the handle as he looked back to me.

“Let me help you. It’s quite a high step.” He gave me his hand and gestured for me to walk in first.

I was shocked.

The windowless room was covered with shelves full of what appeared to be ancient books. Two of the shelves contained books that had curious red slashes on the bindings, and I saw a massive atlas against one wall, opened to a page that held the shape of some country I could not name. In the middle was a table with a handful of books on it, looking as if they had been handled recently and left out for quick recovery. And finally, embedded in one wall was a wide screen that looked like a television.

“What do the red slashes mean?” I asked in wonder.

“Those are banned books. As far as we know, they may be the only copies that still exist in all of Aster.”

I turned to him, asking with my eyes what I did not dare to say out loud.

“Yes, you can look at them,” he said in a manner that implied I was putting him out but with an expression that said he had been hoping I would ask.

I lifted one of the books carefully, terrified that I might accidentally destroy a one-of-a-kind treasure. I flipped through the pages but ended up setting it back down almost immediately. I was simply too awestruck.

I turned around to find Luhan typing on something that looked like a flat typewriter attached to the television screen.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A computer. Have you never seen one?” I shook my head, and Luhan did not seem too surprised. “Not many people have them anymore. This one is specifically for the information held in this room. If anything about your Halloween exists, this will tell us where it is.”

I was not fully sure of what he is saying, but I did not ask him to clarify. In a few seconds his hunt produced a three bullet list on the screen.

“Oh, excellent!” he exclaimed. “Wait right there.”

I stood by the table as Luhan found the three books that would reveal what Halloween was. I hoped it was not something stupid and that I had not made him go through all this effort for nothing.

The first book defines Halloween as a festival that marked at the end of summer. Not wanting to slow us, I did not bother mentioning I had no idea what that festival was. It said they believed that spirits passed in and out of the world on Halloween, and people would put on masks to ward off the evil ones. Later, it evolved into a secular holiday, mainly for children. They dressed up in costumes and went through around their towns singing songs and were rewarded with candy, creating the saying “trick or treat,” as they did a trick to get a treat.

The second book defined it as something similar, only it mentioned pumpkins and Christianity.

“This will be the interesting one,” Luhan claimed, flipping through a book that was much thinner than the others and handwritten.

“How so?” I asked, coming around to get a better look.

“This, Lady Scarlett, is one of the volumes of Spencer Aster’s personal diaries.

“What?” I exclaimed. “Can I touch it?”

“Let me find the page we are searching for first. Look, it even has a picture!”

And there, like an apparition, an image from an unknown past showed Spencer Aster with a tight expression on his face, his suit crisp and his stance tall. It was bizarre how much of the king and Luhan I could see in the way he stood. Beside him, a woman was giving the camera half-hearted smile. There was something to her face that hinted she was once very lovely, but the shine had gone out of her eyes. She seemed tired.

Surrounding the couple were three figures. The first was a teenage girl, beautiful and vibrant, grinning widely and wearing a crown and a frilly gown. How funny! She was dressed as a princess. And then there were two boys, one slightly taller than the other and both dressed as characters I did not recognize. They looked like they were on the verge of mischief. Below the image was an entry, amazingly enough, in Spencer Aster’s own hand.

The children celebrated Halloween this year with a party. I suppose it is one way to forget what is going on around them but to me it feels frivolous. We were one of the few families remaining who have enough money to do something festive, but this child’s play seems wasteful.

“Do you think that is why we don’t celebrate anymore? Because it is wasteful?” I asked.

“Could be. If the date’s any indication, this was right before the Fourth World War. At that point, most people had nothing – picture an entire nation of Sevens with a handful of Twos.”

“Wow.” I tried to imagine the landscape of our country like that, blown apart by war, then fighting to pull itself back together. It was amazing.

“How many of these diaries are there?” I asked.

Luhan pointed to a shelf with a row of journals similar to the one we held. “About a dozen or so.”

I could not believe it! All this history right in one room.

“Thank you,” I said. “This is something I would never ever have dreamed of seeing. I can’t believe all this exists.”

He was beaming. “Would you like to read the rest of it?” He motioned to the diary.

“Yes, of course!” I practically shouted before my duties came back to me. “But I cannot stay; I have to finish studying that terrible report. And you have to get back to work.”

“True. Well, how about this? You can take the book and jeep it for a few days.”

“Am I allowed to do that?” I asked in awe.

“No.” He smiled.

I hesitated, afraid of what I held. What if I lost it? What if I ruined it? Surely he had to be thinking the same thing. But I would never have an opportunity like this again. I could be careful enough for the sake of this gift.

“Okay. Just a night or two and then I will give it straight back.”

“Hide it well.”

And I did. This was more than a book; it was Luhan’s trust. I tucked it inside my piano stool under a pile of sheet music – a place my maids never cleaned. The only hands that would touch it would be mine.

is this story okay?! I hope it is okay ^^

well, today, I want to share all of you about a drama that I'm follows recently.

It is Chinese drama from Mainland and the title is The Cage of Love! and boom! I fell in love with the male lead actor!

gosh! I could die from his handsomeness! his name is hawick lau! and for the first time I saw him, I couldn't stop praising him from being too handsome in this story! oh my god! oh my god! oh my god!

Ah! before I forget, this story set in republican era in China, where Jiang Yu (hawick lau) took over a textile company which is Cai Hong's father's company and soon, he fell in love with Wu Cai Hong (female lead) - the daughter of his enemy. However, Cai Hong is in dilemma and she doesn't know whether she's truly love her bestfriend - like - brother, Shao Tian, who deeply in love with her. Shao Tian took care of her since they're small and she felt grateful towards him. But of course Shao Tian wasn't rich like Jiang Yu, but he's sincere towards Cai Hong, and she felt the same too. But I think Jiang Yu also grown his affection over Cai Hong since Cai Hong is his assistant even she's always blamed him - where she thought that Jiang Yu who was the one who killed her father. and I totally doesn't like Jiang Yu's little sister, Fang Fei Fei (I don't know whether she is his little sister by blood or what because his family name is Jiang, but his sister is Fang) because she loathed Cai Hong very much. Well, if in my real life, it is considerate because Cai Hong's father (Wu Hong Da) has done something to their father till it lead to his death and caused their mother to be trauma. BUT! There's a plot twist where Jiang Yu's mother fond over Cai Hong due to her kindness! Yeah! Jiang Yu - Cai Hong ftw!

But, you know like any other story, this is one kind of triangle love story. BUT! I fell in love with this story because, first, the hero is freaking goddamn handsome (my preferences), second, it is because of the setting, theme, everything is beautiful! for your information, I'm one of the historical drama fan! hahahaha whether chinese or korean, no, I'm more into chinese more because of their hair, clothes, accessory and everything! I will show how handsome he is! muahahahahaha!

  Jiang Yu Wu Cai Hong

Zhou Shao Tian

Fang Fei Fei