“Master, was it Guoguo who made you angry?” Little Guoguo hovered in front of Ye Tianxie’s eyes, her two small hands clasped nervously together. Those crystalline eyes looked up at him piteously. The shift in Ye Tianxie’s mood had made her, all at once, extraordinarily well-behaved… because it was the first time she had ever felt her master sad. The very sad kind of sad.

Guoguo’s voice was a thread of clear spring water, running slowly through a heart whose wound had just been torn open again. With an effort, he pulled a faint, stiff smile onto his face. “Guoguo’s been very good today. Why would I ever be angry with you?”

“But… Guoguo can feel it. Master is sad.” Little Guoguo’s eyes swam with tears. Feeling Ye Tianxie’s pain for the first time, Guoguo — who normally had not a shred of restraint around him — was thrown into a panic.

Ye Tianxie was silent, then smiled and shook his head. “Life always comes with joy and anger and sorrow and delight, in one form or another. I feel sad because I have the most ordinary sort of heart there is… If I hadn’t felt sad just now, it would mean my heart was already dead.”

“……” Guoguo blinked her tear-filled eyes at him… She had not understood a word of it.

If she had been able to understand it, she wouldn’t have been Guoguo.

Looking at the tiny creature in front of him, Ye Tianxie found his heart slowly turning warm. Around him she was mischievous, high-handed, without a shred of restraint… and yet when he was truly hurting, the worry that surfaced in her eyes was real — absolutely, entirely real…

She held nothing back around him because she had no guard up against him at all, because she was in earnest about treating him as the person closest to her in the world. So at his side she was happy, free to do anything she liked without a care, including bullying and extorting her own master. And when her master’s heart hurt, hers hurt too.

“Guoguo…” Ye Tianxie murmured her name. Guoguo had come from the Hour of Fate… and the Hour of Fate was what she had left him. Guoguo was like a small living thing she had left behind to keep him company.

Somewhere below his own awareness, hadn’t he placed a little of what he felt for her onto Guoguo as well?

Guoguo…

Guoguo…

“Wow… look, she’s grown a little bit more. Mo’er says she’ll be able to open her eyes tomorrow… Wow! She’s so cute, I want to scoop her up and hold her.”

“Mm. This way, when I’m not here, you’ll have one more adorable companion.”

“She is not a companion… we raised her together, so she’s like our daughter… Remember that, all right? She’s our daughter. Hee!”

“……”

“So what should we name her? She’s so cute — it has to be the cutest name there is.”

“……”

“She’s the one Mo’er brought back from that place… let’s call her… Guoguo. Guoguo. Is that all right…”

Those voices — he had no idea where they came from — flashed across the sea of Ye Tianxie’s heart like a streak of passing light. His whole body shook. He shut his eyes hard and gathered everything he had to hunt down the source of that remembered sound… but it was formless and insubstantial, there and yet perhaps no more than an illusion, a single meteor across a dark night; however desperately he searched, he could not find the faintest trace of it again.

He reached out and gathered Guoguo into his hands, holding her small, soft body lightly. Guoguo blinked her big, liquid eyes and let him do it, docile, without resisting…

Three years ago, when she left, his heart had been torn open again and again, every day passing in a daze of pain, like a man half dead and half alive. When she went, this house had nothing left in it but him alone — no one to keep him company, to comfort him, to soothe a heart that was nothing but scar tissue.

Now, even though she had wounded him a second time, he was no longer alone. Guoguo didn’t know how to comfort anyone, but those piteous, star-bright eyes without one impurity in them, and that timid little voice, warmed him more than any comfort could have. Because that worry of hers was real, and it came from the bottom of her heart.

And so the pain in his heart left him that quickly.

It was a very good feeling.

Creak…

Su Feifei’s closed door opened gently, and someone came out of it with very light, very slow steps and drew closer to him. A moment later, Su Feifei’s clear, sweet voice sounded behind him. “Tianxie — look. Is it pretty?”

“Wow! Wow… so pretty! Master, look, look! Sister Feifei’s dress is so pretty!”

Guoguo’s shout turned Ye Tianxie’s head, and in the instant his gaze settled, he froze, staring blankly. In that moment Su Feifei was too beautiful to be a woman of this world.

Su Feifei stood quietly in his line of sight. She had changed into a pale blue gown embroidered in gold thread with a pattern of flowers and birds, ornamented all over with splendid fragments of sky-blue jade. Below it fell a long skirt worked in snow-wave cross-stitch, past her ankles and trailing a long sweep of fabric across the floor. Her eyes moved like autumn light on water; her cherry lips showed a gleam of shell-white teeth; her fine brows curved like a new moon. Most affecting of all were the faint smile at the corner of her mouth and those large eyes, shimmering with a hazy, intoxicating air that made a man want to lose himself in her gaze… to listen to her, to cherish her, to protect her…

She was radiant to begin with, and framed by this magnificent gown she was beautiful enough to stop the breath. She was only standing there quietly, without any movement at all, and yet the way she carried herself in that moment hit Ye Tianxie with a shock no smaller than the one he had felt the first time he laid eyes on Liu Qiyue. Above all, the way she had deliberately lifted that long, elegant, snow-white neck gave her, within all that loveliness, an air of surpassing nobility, so that it was as though he were looking at a princess of some ancient court, enthroned high above everyone. In only a short while Su Feifei had become an entirely different person, and this entrance of hers was as dazzling as the sun coming up in full brilliance… Four words surfaced unbidden in Ye Tianxie’s mind — a peerless immortal beauty.

“Do I look nice?” Su Feifei blinked a pair of bright eyes that shone as they moved, and in that flawless face there was a light smile capable of melting ice and snow. She parted her lightly made-up pink lips and said gently, “This court gown is called ‘Miracle of the Ocean.’ It was the last work of Proy, the greatest designer in France, and the one he poured the most of himself into. The year I first saw it, I fell in love with it on sight and told my dad to buy it for me… That day happened to be my birthday, too. My dad’s offer climbed from three million all the way to thirty million, and Proy refused every one of them flat, because he had made it for Queen Elizabeth XXVII of Yingji… Afterward I went to Proy myself and asked only to be allowed to try it on once, and he agreed… When I walked up to him wearing it, he shouted, beside himself, that I was as noble and beautiful as a daughter of the ocean. And then he gave me the dress that had been meant for Elizabeth XXVII, for nothing, and praised me as the most beautiful princess of all.”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

“If I’m a princess… then, my prince… will you allow me to dance for you?”

As the last word left her she spread her arms and began to dance, and the beautiful gown moved elegantly with her, each of those sky-blue jade gems throwing off shifting light as she turned. The hands she swept through the air might have been carved from jade, white and lustrous almost to the point of transparency; in motion they were duckweed rippling on water, a frail willow bending in the wind, and with those slender, crystalline fingers she drew, in an instant, a picture of unearthly grace, an immortal maiden dancing. It held Ye Tianxie’s eyes the way a magnet holds iron.

She was a rich family’s Young Mistress in the fullest sense of the term, and yet she had never had any of the spoiled temper a rich man’s daughter was supposed to have; what she had instead was cooking that astonished people. And now she was using the most beautiful side of herself, using her dancing, to send another tremor through Ye Tianxie. Watching her dance, Ye Tianxie went from staring blankly to something closer to enchantment, forgetting the pain of a moment ago, forgetting all of it. In his heart, in his sight, there was nothing left but the drifting elegance of Su Feifei’s step, the slender, immortal grace of her dance.

“So pretty… so beautiful.” Guoguo watched Su Feifei without blinking once, her eyes as though inlaid with countless glittering little stars, her voice gone light and floating… She was watching so raptly that she didn’t notice the lollipop that never left her hand slip from her fingers and land on Ye Tianxie.

Su Feifei turned gracefully, and one crystal-clear, delicate hand reached out toward Ye Tianxie. Their eyes met, and Su Feifei smiled sweetly. “My prince — will you… dance with me?”

For a brief moment Ye Tianxie lost himself, and his hand went out almost without his willing it — and then a small, smooth hand closed around it… closed around it tight.

Su Feifei pulled him up. She leaned lightly against him and led him into the dance. Ye Tianxie had plainly never danced in his life; he had not the faintest grasp of even the most basic step, and his body was entirely rigid as it followed the movements of hers.

The girl in front of him, wrapped in that sky-blue gown, drew closer and closer, until at last she closed her eyes, wrapped both arms tightly around him, and rested her head against his shoulder…

“You love her… so deeply. I know I could never take her place…” Her eyes stayed shut, her lashes trembling faintly, and she murmured, “But… even if she’s gone away for a while, you aren’t alone. You still have Big Brother Zuo, and Qiushui, and Sister Qiyue… and me.”

“Feifei, I…”

“Don’t say it. I know. I know all of it.” Su Feifei cut him off urgently and pressed closer against him. “I won’t cling to you, and I certainly won’t do anything I shouldn’t… I only hope that before she comes back, you won’t send me away… Just let me stay here. All right…? All right…?”

Something deep inside him felt as though it had been struck, hard — shaken, warmed, aching all at once… He found that he had no words left in him at all.

“Loneliness really is terrible. I know, because I came through exactly that kind of terror, one step at a time, myself. She’s left your side for now, but I believe that, loving her as much as you do, one day very soon she will come back. Until then, just let me stay and wait for her with you… all right? And when she comes back, I’ll leave right away… without… looking back…”

Without looking back… leaving. Six words, and the sound of Su Feifei’s heart breaking ran all the way through them. Picturing that day, she could hardly breathe.

Because she had never loved before, she had never known until now that being fond of someone could bring so much happiness, and so much pain.

She liked him so much. Asleep, she was forever dreaming of a whole life spent at his side, and every time she woke she would grin foolishly for a long while and then sit in a daze for a long while… She loved him that much, so why was she saying things like this… why had she actually gone and decided that if she came back, she herself would quietly leave, and never see him again…

Was she too silly, too stupid — or was this simply the terrible sorcery in that one word, love?

If being with him is only one beautiful dream in a life…

then could the dream be allowed to last a little longer…

One year… two years… three years… ten years… a hundred years…

(End of Chapter 181)