Lahan

Name: Lahan

Gender: Male

Age: 19

Family Status: Second son of Lakan Kan’s younger half-brother; adopted son and heir of Lakan Kan

Occupation: Civil official in charge of national finance; manager of the Lou family main house affairs and side businesses

Appearance Traits: Small build, slightly wavy hair, sharp “fox-like” eyes, round glasses (non-prescription), abacus hanging from his belt

Lahan is a member of the “Lou” numerical genius clan and the adopted heir of Lakan Kan, despite being biologically the second son of Lakan Kan’s younger half-brother.

He works as a civil official in the palace’s finance department and simultaneously oversees the Lou main house’s internal management and multiple side ventures and investments that support the household.

On the surface he is mild, polite, and somewhat whimsical, but underneath he is highly calculating and always thinking in terms of debts, favors, and long-term leverage.

He consciously cultivates positions where others “owe” him, whether in money, information, or obligations.

Lahan speaks in a light, slightly teasing tone and often sounds genial and harmless, which makes him easy to underestimate.

In reality he is very pragmatic and opportunistic, constantly weighing costs and benefits, and he rarely invests energy in anything that does not stimulate his curiosity.

He has a distinctive verbal tic: he frequently repeats key phrases twice, such as “I’ll say it, say it again,” or “Don’t get caught, don’t get caught, all right.”

This speech pattern is inherited or copied from his biological older brother, and over time even Maomao starts picking it up.

Lahan is deeply “numbers-obsessed,” to the point that others around him describe him as abnormal.

Even so, he can be oddly easygoing with people he accepts, playing the part of a meddlesome older brother toward Maomao and a long-suffering steward toward Lakan Kan.

He is very much a “face connoisseur”: he likes beautiful faces, but he also insists that the “inside” be just as beautiful, or he loses interest.

For him, the Emperor’s younger brother Jinshi represents an ideal in both appearance and inner “beauty,” making Lahan a rather intense fan of Jinshi’s.

Lahan is a small-built young man with slightly unruly, wavy hair that makes him look younger than he is.

He wears round glasses over his fox-like eyes, giving him an intellectual, slightly mischievous look.

His glasses actually have no prescription; they are purely a distinguishing marker so that his adoptive father, who cannot recognize faces, can identify him at a glance.

He typically carries an abacus hanging from his belt, a visual symbol of how inseparable he is from calculations and numbers.

Lahan’s defining trait is his extraordinary sense for numbers, to the extent that he effectively “sees” the world as numerical patterns.

He belongs to the Lou family line renowned for numerical brilliance, and he stands out even there as a severe “numbers idiot” in the sense that his obsession is extreme.

He interprets nearly everything in numerical or proportional terms.

For example, he casually describes workloads as “thirty percent more,” arranges his letters according to the golden ratio, and evaluates emotions as if they were numerical values, remarking that someone “does not look like the value for anger.”

To him, account books are not just records, but aesthetic objects that can be “beautiful” or “ugly.”

“Ugly numbers” in his vocabulary correspond to malignant factors like fraud, falsification, waste, and crime; “beautiful numbers” indicate soundness, balance, and honest structure.

This perception led him to denounce his own grandfather and mother because they repeatedly “produced ugly numbers.”

In plain terms, he recognized that they were repeatedly involved in serious wrongdoing and dangerous corruption, and that their actions would eventually drag the Lou family into ruin.

Using only account books and figures, Lahan can pinpoint inconsistencies, hidden embezzlement, and systemic fraud with terrifying accuracy.

Within the palace, he exposed widespread embezzlement and malpractice among Lou-related factions, which solidified his authority in financial matters.

He also deduced Jinshi’s true identity as the Emperor’s younger brother purely from physical measurements, noting that Jinshi’s body dimensions matched those of the imperial sibling.

Maomao and Lakan Kan both refer to Lahan’s mind as a “soroban head” – a brain built like an abacus that automatically and relentlessly calculates.

In the palace, Lahan works in the financial administration, handling the empire’s economic and budgetary matters.

His ability to detect irregularities from numbers alone makes him a natural enemy of corruption and a powerful ally for anyone who values clean governance.

Within the Lou main house, he acts as the de facto manager of household finances, internal operations, and external dealings with other noble families.

He also runs a broad range of side businesses and investments to support the family, making him the economic engine behind the scenes.

This dual role leaves him constantly busy: he must both contain Lakan Kan’s eccentric spending and schemes, and also ensure that Maomao is not financially crushed by her adoptive father’s whims.

He often ends up being the exhausted “straight man” trying to keep the family’s ledger and reputation from falling apart.

Relationship with Maomao (Adoptive Younger Sister / Cousin)

Maomao is simultaneously Lahan’s cousin and his adoptive younger sister.

Although they did not grow up together, Lahan almost unilaterally decided to treat her as his “little sister.”

He even insists that Maomao address him as “big brother,” demanding a level of respect and familiarity that she does not particularly want to give.

From Maomao’s perspective, he is closer to “a suspicious man claiming to be my brother” than to an actual sibling.

Because of his intense admiration for Jinshi, Lahan occasionally corners Maomao when Lakan Kan is not around and tries to “advise” her regarding Jinshi.

He suggests outrageous things like “Since you have the opportunity, you should at least accept Jinshi’s pity and bear his child; a child born between you would have beautiful numbers, and I would happily raise it, while you could at least enjoy eating the placenta – there is no loss for anyone.”

These remarks are spectacularly insensitive given Maomao’s complicated family background and traumas around parents and children.

They amount to dancing on a minefield in her heart, and in response she often answers with physical retaliation, such as stepping painfully on his toes.

Despite this, their conversations are surprisingly well synchronized, and they understand each other’s quirks.

Maomao has learned how to “translate” other people’s vague questions into precise, number-flavored terms that Lahan can quickly process, acting almost like an interpreter when others consult him.

From the outside, they look very much like a classic “fussy older brother and annoyed younger sister” pair.

Maomao tends to deny this, but for Lahan, she is an extremely “easy to deal with” person, someone whose logic he can follow and whose reactions he can predict.

In part, his enthusiasm for playing “big brother” may simply stem from his childhood position as a younger brother; he may have always wanted a younger sibling to dote on and meddle with.

Even so, he is genuinely concerned about how Lakan Kan splurges on Maomao and wishes his adoptive father would show more restraint with money where she is involved.

Relationship with Lakan Kan (Adoptive Father)

Lahan calls Lakan Kan “father” in a formal, respectful way, and serves as the practical manager of the Lou household under him.

He oversees the household budget, external relations, and logistics, constantly patching up the damage caused by Lakan Kan’s reckless, freewheeling behavior.

Lakan Kan is a “charge forward my way” type who tends to cause trouble without considering the long-term consequences.

As a result, Lahan spends a lot of time cleaning up messes and compensating for his adoptive father’s schemes, especially where Maomao’s safety and finances are concerned.

Even if he complains, his loyalty in practice is clear: he chose Lakan Kan over his own grandfather and mother during an internal family power struggle.

He also respects Lakan Kan as another “genius type” of the Lou family and recognizes him as one of the few people whose mind is comparably sharp, even if their interests differ.

Relationship with His Biological Father

Lahan refers to his biological father as “father” in a more casual, familial sense, and their relationship is surprisingly good given the history.

On paper, Lahan helped Lakan Kan seize control of the Lou family from this man, which should have led to deep resentment.

However, Lahan’s father was originally a Lou family member with great talent in agriculture.

His own father (Lahan’s grandfather) suppressed this talent, forcing him into a military path, arranging a political marriage he did not want, and eventually pushing him into a court official role he never asked for, purely as a puppet for the older generation’s power games.

The “coup” by Lakan Kan and Lahan, which stripped him of official power, effectively freed him from those shackles.

Far from hating them, he is extremely grateful for being released from a life he disliked and from the crushing expectations of his own father and wife.

After the power shift, he threw himself fully into agriculture, joyfully reclaiming fields and focusing on research like a man reborn.

He has become a hyper-enthusiastic farmer-scholar, obsessing in particular over sweet potatoes.

He is so absorbed in his agricultural experiments that even when the country suffers mass devastation from locust plagues, he remains focused on his crops and research.

He leaves crisis management to his older son, which leads both sons to half-jokingly conclude that he has become a kind of “agricultural immortal” or dangerously extreme farmer.

Relationship with His Older Brother

Lahan’s biological older brother is a rare “professional farmer” within the Lou family, and by temperament he is a grounded, commonsense person.

Because of this, he has a hard time understanding Lahan’s worldview and tends to treat him as something like a bizarre and fragile creature that must be handled carefully.

He also harbors resentment because Lahan’s choices during the family conflict amounted to betraying their parents and household.

This sometimes makes him curt or cold toward Lahan, even though the bond is not severed.

As children, they had their share of mishaps, such as the time Lahan fell asleep after a botched haircut and his brother tried to “fix” it, ending up cutting almost all of Lahan’s bangs off when Lahan was only five.

The older brother openly calls his numerical obsession “abnormal,” suggesting that Lahan dragged the whole household through chaos with his number-driven decisions.

Despite the complaints, the older brother is fundamentally kind-hearted, much like Lakan Kan and Lahan’s father.

He became a professional farmer mainly because he helped his father with fieldwork and eventually was pulled along into that life without realizing it.

Lahan knows this soft-heartedness very well and exploits it mercilessly.

He “tugs the right strings” to maneuver his brother into helping him and ends up making his brother draw the short straw again and again.

From the outside, though, their relationship looks relatively good: Lahan calls him “big brother” without any hesitation and clearly does not dislike him.

He truly sees him as a good brother, feels sorry when he overburdens him, and even tries to introduce him to capable women, although his attempts do not necessarily result in outcomes that are actually good for his brother.

The older brother, however, is physically gifted to an almost inhuman degree: his stamina and physical performance do not deteriorate as expected with age.

From Lahan’s perspective, this is its own kind of numerical horror – a body whose values for endurance and movement refuse to “degrade properly” – leading Lahan to remark that “my brother is also strange,” just in a different direction.

Relationship with His Grandfather and Mother

Lahan is effectively estranged from both his grandfather and his biological mother.

He views them as representatives of an old, rigid value system that cannot adapt and that nearly destroyed the family.

From their perspective, Lakan Kan and Lahan are traitors who defied the authority of the family head.

They hate the two as backstabbing relatives who toppled the “rightful” leadership of the Lou clan.

From Lahan’s perspective, the situation is the reverse.

He believes his grandfather and mother are the real traitors, whose involvement in dangerous illegal schemes and their willingness to be manipulated by bad actors brought the family to the edge of annihilation.

His grandfather still imagines himself as the true family head and behaves like a parasite within the household, secretly plotting a comeback.

Lahan sees this as a serious internal threat: a “worm in the lion’s body,” biding its time.

His mother actively fuels her father-in-law’s ambitions, urging him on as a hardline instigator.

To her, her husband and sons are merely parts or tools to expand her own status, not people to respect.

She believes that, as members of a noble house, they must seek higher status and greater political power above all else.

She despises “lowly” pursuits like agriculture and number-crunching as jobs for commoners and looks down on her sons’ talents and interests.

Lahan describes her as “the embodiment of arrogance” and “too overbearing,” indicating deep incompatibility of temperament.

For him and his brother, she resembles what modern readers would call a toxic parent.

Ironically, she does possess a genuine talent for judging the value of objects and investments.

When Lahan liquidated her possessions, many items sold for more than their original purchase price, showing that if she had married into a merchant family instead of a noble one, she might have thrived.

Lahan recognizes this buried potential and can even think, with some bitterness, that she could have been successful if her pride and narrow values had not stood in the way.

Nonetheless, the emotional damage and ideological gulf between them keeps their relationship broken and distant.

Lahan has no intention of marrying anytime soon and frankly wants to continue enjoying his bachelor life.

He prefers relationships with older widows, largely because they are less likely to become clingy or create complications for his carefully arranged life.

His worldview is meritocratic: he respects competence and self-reliance regardless of gender or status.

Because of this, women who want to stand on their own feet often find him very attractive – he sees their abilities instead of just their appearance or family name.

In the story, two women in particular develop strong feelings for him.

Yao

Yao is a noble-born young woman who becomes a lady-in-waiting attached to the medical office and is also Maomao’s colleague and friend.

She ran away from a marriage arranged by the uncle who inherited her family’s estate and took her loyal former maid Yanyan with her to work in the palace.

When housing at her workplace became overcrowded, Yao needed a safe place where her uncle’s influence could not reach.

She was temporarily taken in at the Lou household, where she met Lahan.

Lahan’s conversational skills quickly put Yao at ease.

He did not sugarcoat the harsh realities of working women’s lives but still encouraged her to pursue what she truly wanted to do.

Crucially, he evaluated Yao not based on her looks or noble origin but on her inner qualities and abilities.

This made a deep impression on her, and she gradually realized that she wanted to be recognized by Lahan as a fully capable, independent adult.

Yao is gentle and well-bred, and it takes her some time to sort out her own feelings.

Ultimately, she understands that what she wants is his acknowledgment of her competence, which deepens into romantic affection.

Sanban

Sanban is a woman of the same age as Lahan and serves as one of his personal aides.

She was born into a merchant family and ran away from a marriage arranged by her parents, instead “selling” herself as a talent to Lakan Kan.

Lakan Kan recognized her abilities and brought her into the Lou household.

There, she became one of Lahan’s most trusted subordinates.

Sanban admires Lahan intensely.

She respects that he values her professional skills regardless of her gender and takes her usefulness seriously, rather than seeing her as merely a domestic ornament.

She also understands his less admirable sides – his manipulative tendencies and emotional detachment – and still chooses to devote herself to him.

Her feelings are fervent, to the point of being almost fanatical.

For example, when Lahan uses a carriage, Sanban refuses to leave such tasks to hired drivers and insists on acting as his coachwoman herself.

She is fully aware that, as a servant, she cannot realistically become his primary wife and has resigned herself to the idea of being a “second” or subordinate partner in his life if that is all she can have.

Sanban dislikes Yao intensely.

From her perspective, Yao is a sheltered noblewoman freeloading as a long-term guest and intruding on “her” master.

She expresses her hostility through polite but barbed comments and subtle coldness.

Yao understands these jabs perfectly well and responds with her own brand of courteous but firm retorts.

Lahan is not actually oblivious to the tension between the two women.

He notices the sparks flying, but chooses to pretend he does not, maintaining a careful, self-preserving neutrality while focusing on his numbers, his work, and his own amusement.