An uncanny scene presented itself in front of Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei. Just as Su Feifei’s hand was about to touch the girl’s body, the girl’s fine eyebrows moved a fraction, almost imperceptibly… and in that instant Su Feifei’s hand stopped, and astonishment appeared on her face. She pushed her hand forward experimentally and found that it was as though she had touched a pane of transparent glass; she could not push it any further, however she tried.

“This… Tianxie, what’s going on… why is my hand… it’s as if something’s in the way, and there plainly isn’t anything.” Su Feifei looked blankly at her own hands, then felt out again toward the same place… and the same thing happened. Transparent glass in front of the girl. She could not reach the girl’s body at all.

The uncanniness of it, defying every natural principle, threw Su Feifei into confusion; and putting it together with everything else that had happened tonight, she began to have the feeling she was inside a dream.

This little girl was truly too strange… A rainy night of lightning, the perfectly even knocking, the closed eyes, the soundless stillness… and that barrier, which could not be explained by ordinary reason at all.

Ye Tianxie reached out toward the little girl — and to Su Feifei’s further astonishment, the identical motion from Ye Tianxie met no obstruction whatsoever. His hand touched the girl and came to rest on her small shoulder.

After standing in the rain so long, the little girl’s body was frighteningly cold. Where his hand met her shoulder he could feel her body trembling lightly — and suddenly the silent little girl surged forward and threw herself hard against Ye Tianxie’s chest, holding him tightly… tightly.

Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei looked at each other, wordless for a moment.

“Little one.” Ye Tianxie patted her shoulder lightly and called to her, testing.

“Bro… ther…”

A faint sobbing sound, trembling and grief-stricken, came out of the little girl clinging to Ye Tianxie. That soft voice was extraordinarily ethereal, and yet it came with a marked difficulty… as though those two syllables alone had already cost her far too much strength.

Brother? Su Feifei shot Ye Tianxie a look full of astonishment, plainly asking: is she your sister? But in fact she knew perfectly well that every one of Ye Tianxie’s relatives had passed away, and that he had only three friends; there could be no sister anywhere.

“I’m not your brother, little one. You’ve mistaken me for someone else.” Ye Tianxie gave Su Feifei a helpless smile, but told the little girl the truth.

“Bro… ther, brother…”

She went on holding on to him tightly, her head buried against his chest, weeping without a sound.

Su Feifei tried once more to touch the girl’s body; her hand could come within a few centimeters of the girl and then could go no further… This impossible phenomenon left Feifei deeply uneasy, and mixed into that unease was something else she could not have named or explained.

“Tianxie… she’s so strange. Why can’t I touch her? Is it an illusion? Or… Tianxie, look — on her shoulder, there seems to be a note stuck there.”

At Su Feifei’s prompting, Ye Tianxie’s gaze moved to the little girl’s shoulder… and it was indeed a note. The little girl had stood a long time in heavy rain, and every piece of clothing on her was soaked through; an ordinary note would long since have been beaten out of shape by rain like that, or torn apart altogether… and yet that note stuck to the shoulder of her dress was, uncannily, in perfect condition. There was not so much as a single drop of water on it, not a trace of damp.

Ye Tianxie tried flicking at the note with his hand, and it came away easily and fell into his palm. He unfolded it — and on it were two short lines of writing.

The first line was four words only: Her name is Xiaoxi.

As though struck hard by a bolt out of heaven, Ye Tianxie’s pupils contracted violently and his body went rigid; eyes that had been steady an instant before turned utterly unfocused… And in that daze the note drifted feebly out of his hand and fell to the ground.

“Tianxie?” Ye Tianxie’s reaction sent a wave of panic through Su Feifei, and she spoke up nervously.

Setting the little girl back on her feet, Ye Tianxie suddenly bolted out of the door, ran a dozen meters and more before stopping, and lifted his head to look at the water pouring down out of that pitch-black sky — soundless, blank, and even when raindrops struck them, his eyes did not blink. As though he had lost consciousness altogether.

“Tianxie! Tianxie, what’s wrong!” Badly frightened, Su Feifei ran out after him without a thought for the downpour or the lightning and threw her arms around him so he could not abandon her and dash off again. “Tianxie, don’t frighten me. What on earth is wrong?”

Soaked through in a moment, Su Feifei could barely feel the cold of the rain or the crash of the thunder; her whole mind was tied to Ye Tianxie… The swing of feeling and the violence of the reaction he had just displayed, he had only ever shown for one person… his Xian’er.

“Xian’er —”

Ye Tianxie lifted his head and shouted that name at the dim sky, with the greatest voice he had and every scrap of will in him — the one that haunted him waking and sleeping, carved into his bones, printed onto his soul. The enormous shout was swallowed at once by the falling rain and the thunder. Ye Tianxie closed his eyes, clenched both fists, and went on asking himself, down at the bottom of his heart…

Why… why… why… why…

That scent that day was not an illusion.

Why… when she was plainly right there beside me, would she not see me.

Why…

Why…

What is there left between us that can’t be said? If there really is some unspeakable difficulty as vast as the sky… then what is it, that the two of us can’t face together?

That enormous shout shook Su Feifei’s eardrums and her soul. She closed eyes that had gone misty all at once and said nothing more, holding him in silence… To be able to hold him like this, anywhere at all, every minute and every second of it was so warm, so precious…

If one day I left him, would he panic like this and shout my name with no thought for anything else… If he would, then even if I could only think about him for the rest of my life, I would be happy to the very end of it.

Suddenly he took her hand. Su Feifei raised her eyes and met Ye Tianxie’s — bright, and with a desolation in them. Her hair had been washed into disorder by the rain, and several strands were plastered to her forehead. In that silent moment, the stiffness in Ye Tianxie’s expression slowly eased, and then he suddenly gave her a smile — a smile that set her heart racing… because his gaze had suddenly turned very gentle. A gentleness there had never been before…

“Feifei. Be my girlfriend. Will you?” He gently smoothed the strands of hair the rain had scattered across her forehead. And his voice was gentler still, soaking straight down into the deepest part of her…

Happiness had come far too suddenly. Su Feifei was left standing there stunned, completely, completely… unable to believe her own ears.

“If you say yes, I’ll stay with you, protect you all your life, and no one will ever hurt you again. Anyone who wants to hurt you, I’ll make pay the most terrible price there is. And if you say no… I’ll pursue you until you’re willing.” He leaned in near her cheek and said it softly at her ear.

Everything had come too fast, too suddenly… Su Feifei had not yet found her way back to herself from that cry of Xian’er before his voice put her, once again, into what felt like a dream… A few seconds ago he had been calling out for his Xian’er with every scrap of strength he had; why, in the turn of a moment, was it as though he had forgotten all of it, forgotten every feeling that had gone before, and begun on another feeling of his own choosing…

“Tianxie…” Su Feifei raised a hand to cover her own lips; the water sliding down her face might have been rain and might have been tears. She murmured softly, “When a man says something… he has to keep to it…”

“Mm. Always. Otherwise, let me be Feifei’s bodyguard forever, and nothing else.” Ye Tianxie hooked his little finger around Su Feifei’s little finger, locking them tight together, and at the corner of his mouth was a smile with nothing impure in it, nothing false, nothing forced.

Su Feifei stared at him blankly, and after a long moment threw herself into his arms and wept beyond speech under the cover of the rain and the thunder… No one knew that the first time she fell in love with a man, she fell in love with so much pain in it; however much she laughed, however lively and cheerful she was, none of it could hold down the stabbing that rose in her heart whenever she thought about the future… She had always known that if she left him, there would be a wound in her heart that would never heal.

He loved his Xian’er so deeply — she had always thought that even if his Xian’er never came back, he would spend his whole life waiting for her… and that his heart would never have room for anyone else.

She had never imagined that, without meaning anything by it, her most beautiful wish would suddenly be granted in this moment. What he had given her was a promise for a lifetime.

She did not know why any of this was happening, or what it was he had been thinking in that moment… She did not want to ask, and did not want to know. If this was a dream, she would rather sink into it and never wake.

That scene held still in the rain, for a long time…

The little girl in purple stood in the doorway, listening quietly to the sound of raindrops striking the ground. Her eyes were closed as they had been all along, and had never once opened.

By the time they came back into the living room, Ye Tianxie’s and Su Feifei’s bodies were soaked through. Ye Tianxie was one thing; but if Su Feifei had not been wearing that reasonably thick coat of his, the thin nightwear underneath, once wet, would have left her hardly different from wearing nothing at all.

Ye Tianxie picked up the note that had drifted to the floor, and before Su Feifei could ask, he said with a small smile, “It’s Xian’er’s handwriting. It says her name is Xiaoxi.”

Su Feifei nodded slightly, asked nothing further, and began to look this girl called “Xiaoxi” over carefully.

Ye Tianxie unfolded the note and looked at the second line. Ten words… and they made his brows knit hard.

Those ten words were — Whatever happens, you must never let her open her eyes!

(End of Chapter 196)