Capital Airport. He lived in Jinghua and had set foot in this place very seldom. Today seemed to be the third time, or perhaps the fourth.

The noise of the crowds at her ear brought Chenxue out of the quiet, and her eyes opened on a world she did not fit into at all. Softly, she murmured, “So many people…”

It had been years since she had seen this many people at once.

“Are they… all good people, like big brother?” She asked it in a weak voice only she could hear. In truth she was still that attached to this world. If a person could stay in it, who would choose death instead?

“There are so many good people in this world. Chenxue is so good that they’ll all be sure to like you. Once your illness is better, there’ll be plenty of people who care about you the way your sister does, and plenty who want to be your friend. And you’d like to have a lot of friends, wouldn’t you?” Ye Tianxie walked on with her in his arms, his eyes level and ahead of him, paying no attention to the strange looks coming at them from either side.

“Mm… I’ve always wanted… to have friends. Only, from when I was very small I could only be in bed, and I never had any… It’s always been my sister keeping me company…”

“Then let me be Chenxue’s first good friend. All right?”

“Mm!” The voice was soft, and yet so very pleased and happy.

They had not gone far when two men caught sight of them and came over quickly. “Good day, Mr. Ye. Young Master Zuo arranged for us to wait for you here. Please come with us.” Clean and quick, with nothing wasted.

Plainly Zuo Pojun had told them how desperately urgent this was. Without a wasted word, they turned and led the way. They had gone only a few steps when Ye Tianxie’s phone rang.

“Mr. Ye, it’s best to turn your phone off before boarding,” one of the two reminded him in passing.

Ye Tianxie took out the phone and glanced at the name on it… Liu Qiyue.

Her, calling now…

He took the call. “Big Sister.”

“Little Brother Tianxie… you’re going to Meili, and then on to Planet Lyle. Aren’t you?” Liu Qiyue’s voice came through the phone calm, with threads of a languid helplessness in it, and that inborn bewitching quality of hers. Even Chenxue, whose hearing was worse than an ordinary person’s, felt something strange come over her at that voice.

“Yes.” Ye Tianxie answered with the one word.

There was a short silence at the other end, and then a soft, faraway sigh from Liu Qiyue. “I know everything that has happened. For you to be this impulsive, she must be a very special girl… Only, Little Brother Tianxie — even if you can leave for Planet Lyle the moment you reach Meili, do you know how long it takes… to get from Earth to Planet Lyle?”

Ye Tianxie: “…”

“Seven months one way. Fourteen months there and back.”

Ye Tianxie’s feet stopped where they were, and his face froze in that instant and went utterly rigid. A deep helplessness spread through his whole body. So deep that… the phone at his ear slid slowly down and fell to the floor with a sharp crack. He did not hear one word of what Liu Qiyue said after that.

It was not that he had forgotten this problem. It was that he had been running from it somewhere below his own awareness… He had been letting himself hope that the interstellar service would be like an international flight, two or three days at the most. And with one sentence, Liu Qiyue had knocked him back into the real world without any mercy in it.

The interstellar service, after all, is not movement inside one space. It is movement across space, over a distance beyond reckoning. How could it possibly be measured against the time it takes to cross the Earth? One billion for a single passenger — that figure alone, an astronomical number for a fare, is not something the Earth has in it.

Chenxue closed her eyes and drew her body in against his chest, and with an effort pressed a little closer to him. Everything Ye Tianxie had heard, she had heard as well.

The sound of the phone hitting the floor made the two men in front turn around, and the blank look on Ye Tianxie’s face startled them. They came up fast. “Mr. Ye, what’s happened?”

Ye Tianxie might not have heard them. In his arms, Chenxue lifted her head slowly and looked up at him out of a pair of crystal eyes. “Big brother, let’s not go to Planet Lyle, all right… I don’t like this place… It’s so noisy here…”

Ye Tianxie’s eyes came back into focus. He lowered his head slowly and said softly, “Then… where shall we go now?”

“Somewhere… quiet, with green grass on it, all right… It’s been such a long time… such a long time since I’ve seen what grass looks like.” She answered in a voice thin and light as a breeze.

Ye Tianxie turned his head and said to the two men, “Is there a car?”

His voice was very calm, and the calm of it put a chill through both of them for no reason they could name. They both nodded, and one of them said, “Mr. Ye, aren’t you going to—”

“We’re going back… to somewhere quiet, with grass on it.”

That heavy voice came down on their hearts one word at a time, like boulders laid down one after another. In that moment they were entirely certain that this was a man strong enough to frighten them, because with his voice alone he could set the sea of another man’s spirit moving.

Ye Tianxie carried Chenxue away and did not go on with the journey to Meili… In that moment, apart from taking her where she wanted to go, he had no purpose at all, and no idea what he could use to save this girl’s life. He walked back along the way he had come, step by step, and every step weighed ten thousand pounds, as his heart did.

Green grass, running to the edge of sight. A thin thread of a stream ran across it, going somewhere nobody knew, leaving a cheerful chatter of water behind it. Green grass, clear water — in a Jinghua covered over and fouled by everything modern, this place outside the city was like the last clean ground it had left.

The two men Zuo Pojun had sent brought them here and then left without a word. Apart from an occasional bird or insect, the place was quiet enough that only the light wind was left in it, and as far as the eye went there was not a person in sight.

“Do you like it here?” he asked, smiling.

“Mm… it’s so beautiful.” Chenxue’s starry eyes moved over everything, greedy for all of it. Today, at last, she could see nature again at its purest and most beautiful. The view in her eyes at that moment filled her and left her lost in it.

“Then shall we come here and play every day from now on? All right?” That wind was cool and pleasant, and yet it seemed to carry a cold that went to the bone. Ye Tianxie looked straight ahead of him and said it with a smile.

“I’d like that… to come here every day.” The pure green was reflected in Chenxue’s eyes, as pure as the heart behind them. Slowly she rested her head on Ye Tianxie’s shoulder and said softly at his ear, “Big brother, let me lie in your arms. All right?”

Ye Tianxie’s eyes shook. He sat down on the grass and gathered that fragile body carefully in against him. Today was plainly the first day they had met, and still, in this short time, a string of feeling had come to be strung between him and this girl, and he did not want it cut. He had been impulsive for her sake, and heavy-hearted for her sake… and had even begun to be in pain for her sake.

“Big brother, why… are you so good to me?” She lay against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, and murmured it softly.

“Because I like Chenxue.” Ye Tianxie answered in a voice as gentle as her own.

“Mm… hee.” She laughed, and shallow as the laugh was with weakness, it was like a thread of music out of heaven that carries a man away, and it set the strings of Ye Tianxie’s heart moving. “I’m so… happy… Big brother, could you call me… Xue’er, the way my sister does?”

“Xue’er…” He lowered his head and looked closely at the girl in his arms, his hand stroking her soft hair.

“Mm… Big brother, will you promise… Xue’er one… very selfish thing… All right?” Her voice had gone weaker still, weak enough to send a violent stab of pain through the sea of Ye Tianxie’s heart. Something inside him told him that if this girl truly left him like this, he would go mad, and would do things he did not dare imagine himself.

“Xue’er, say it… whatever you say, I’ll agree to it.” He answered in a voice with a tremor running through it. Because this… would be the last request of her life. The last request. The last wish.

“Big brother… promise Xue’er that my sister… can live in your house from now on. All right? I so want my sister… not to suffer any more.”

“All right… all right, I’ll keep Chenxin at the house and never let her leave, and I’ll protect her, and nobody will ever be able to bully her again… I’ll see to it that she’s safe and happy for the rest of her life and never suffers anything again.” His voice was shaking, and even his body had begun to shake beyond his control. He said it at her ear in the steadiest, most serious voice he had, and it was a promise that would not change as long as he lived.

Even with her life at its end, the one she was holding on for was still her sister… A girl as good as this one, and why must she meet a fate as cruel as this?

“Hee… Big brother, you’re so good… In the whole world, you and my sister are the two who are best to Xue’er, the very best.” She closed her eyes, satisfied, feeling the warmth of him, and murmured, “Before I met big brother, I always thought that when I died it would be my sister with me… all the way to the end. I never thought… it would be big brother… It’s so comfortable in big brother’s arms… I so want… I so want to stay like this…”

His arms were so warm. She could not remember how long it had been since anyone had held her with that much tenderness. She was greedy for the feeling. To have her life come slowly to its end inside that warmth — she had not one trace of fear of death left in her.

“What nonsense is this? Xue’er… how could you die? You said you’d marry me. You can’t go breaking your word.” Ye Tianxie lifted eyes that were shaking, and in his sight, that emerald grass was all the color of dead ash.

“Big brother… I like you… I like you so much… If there’s… a next life… then even if my sister likes big brother, I’m still going to be… selfish, and marry you…”

Her small hand pressed against his chest, giving him the last of her beautiful promises with the last of her strength.

“Xue’er…”

“Big brother…” Chenxue lifted her head, and those eyes, beginning to lose their focus, gazed blankly at the far-off sky. Her voice was faint as the softest wind. “Is there really… a heaven in this world…”

Is there really a heaven in this world?

She looked at the sky with longing, and at Ye Tianxie, who was close enough to touch, and cut the shape of him forever into her eyes, into the sea of her heart, and into the depths of her soul…

Her eyes lost the last of their color and slowly closed. The small hand pressed to his chest slipped down a little at a time, until it hung with no strength left in it. There was a satisfied smile on her face — but from the corner of her eye, one clear bead of a tear slid quietly down.

Even through all the years the illness tormented her, she had never, never once shed a single tear.

The world in that moment went as quiet as death. The light wind was cold enough to cut to the bone. Ye Tianxie held the girl in his arms tight, and clenched his teeth, and shut his eyes hard, and those hands gripped closed until they had all but crushed his own bones… but he could no longer feel any pain.

(End of Chapter 278)