An Old Friend

Trigger: brief but explicit mention of suicide, if uncomfortable, please skip to paragraph 5! 

Envoy Zhang Xiu, courtesy name Zhang Qiling. 

Once upon a time, or, come to think of it, not all that long ago, before Liu Yao used the corpses of his brothers as the stairs upon which he ascended to the throne, he'd been crown prince of Great Ye and he hadn't learnt the meaning of loneliness yet. Sure, his father was a philandering wastrel albeit an imperial one and his mother didn't love him the way she loved his little brother, but Liu Yao had company nonetheless, in the form of his two study companions. 

One he fell hopelessly in love with and the other he regarded as a bosom friend, one of the few and far between.