Ye Tianxie leaned against the wall, slowly bringing his breathing back under control. He could not make sense of what he had just done, or of what had come over him to make him do it.

He had the vague feeling that something had carried his soul off in that moment — that his self-control had dropped to the lowest point it could reach, and that this was why he had done a thing that startled even him. Xiaoxi was the girl Xian’er had brought to him, and they had only just met; for him to have behaved like that really was close to unforgivable.

He knocked at Su Feifei’s door, and it was a good while before she opened it. She had changed into fresh underthings and a thick pale-yellow coat, with a short skirt pulled on in a hurry beneath it, leaving two long legs bare, white as mutton-fat jade.

“Feifei, do you have anything smaller that Xiaoxi could wear?” Ye Tianxie asked, testing the ground. Though with Su Feifei’s height, even something a size down would still hang enormously off Xiaoxi’s small frame. For now all he could do was find her something here to put on; once it was light he would go and buy her new clothes.

This girl Xian’er had brought would be a new member of his household.

Su Feifei was back very soon with a small stack of clothes, all of them silk outerwear. “Tianxie, these are the smallest things I have. Let’s go and buy Xiaoxi plenty of clothes tomorrow.”

“Mm.” Ye Tianxie took them and turned to go back to his room.

“Tianxie.” Su Feifei reached out and caught hold of him. The chill of the rain had still not entirely left her; she hunched her shoulders and said in a small voice, “Where’s Xiaoxi… going to sleep?”

Where was she going to sleep?

With Su Feifei? There seemed to be something about Xiaoxi that no ordinary reasoning could describe, and Su Feifei could not touch her at all. And sleeping with Tianxie… Xiaoxi looked thirteen or fourteen, not a child of three or four or five or six, and sharing a bed with a grown man really was hardly appropriate.

Besides… there did not seem to be another spare room either.

“She can sleep in my room for now. It’s late. We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Ye Tianxie said.

“Sleep in your room… that isn’t really all right, is it…” Su Feifei said, hesitating.

Ye Tianxie raised an eyebrow. “Set your mind at rest. It isn’t as though I’d ever do anything to a little girl—”

“That’s not it… it’s… it’s that I’m still a bit frightened… I want to sleep with you.” Su Feifei’s face went faintly pink as she said it, very quietly.

Ye Tianxie: “……”

The heavy rain passed, the dark cloud scattered without a trace, and the sky cleared completely. Ye Tianxie opened his eyes, and the morning sun made him blink. He went to get up as he always did, only to find his body wrapped up in something soft, and himself unable to move at all.

Su Feifei, who was afraid of thunder, had ended up sleeping in his bed after all, with Xiaoxi on one side of him and herself on the other. Fortunately both of them were slight enough that it did not feel crowded. Only Guoguo, whose sleeping spot had been taken, had sulked for a good long while before settling tearfully onto his pillow against his ear.

On his left, Xiaoxi’s slender limbs were still wound tightly around him. Since the night before she had kept burrowing toward him; even after she had plainly fallen asleep, Ye Tianxie would carefully work himself free of her tangle, and a little while later she would have wound herself around him again… like the instinctive motion of a newborn rooting for milk.

Looking at the girl curled against him, Ye Tianxie stared for a while… Anything that develops has some reason behind it. From the way Xiaoxi had rushed at him and held on the night before, through everything she had done since… her eyes were shut, she could see nothing at all, and yet she clung to him — a man she had never met — past all reason. In a single night Ye Tianxie had learned exactly how fierce that clinging was… like a newborn’s attachment to its mother… stronger, even.

He could not understand the cause of it. He could get no answer out of Xiaoxi, whose ability to express herself in language was so badly impaired. Perhaps the only answer lay with Xian’er… just as with the mysterious Hour of Fate, and with Guoguo.

Xian’er… who on earth are you…

Why is everything you bring me so full of mystery? Are you really… a fairy out of heaven?

He turned to look at Su Feifei, and something extraordinarily complicated flickered in his eyes…

Su Feifei was still asleep, not yet woken. Perhaps because of the thunder in the night, her body was slightly curled, and the blanket covered only half of her. Ye Tianxie brought his gaze closer, looking at this girl properly, from this near, for the first time… this girl to whom he had promised a lifetime, and who would spend a lifetime beside him…

There was not a flaw to be picked out anywhere in that delicate face; her skin was like snow, clear as fine jade, the lines of her as though carved by the most exacting hand. Her dark hair lay scattered idly across the pillow and the blanket, setting off the pale face and red lips left outside it, and arms as white as lotus root, in a way that struck straight at the heart.

The Ye Tianxie who had meant, even at the cost of hurting her, to warn her off in some roundabout way before she truly fell in — that same Ye Tianxie had accepted her when she was utterly unprepared for it. That scene in the rain had been abrupt, abrupt to a degree that was almost impossible to take in.

And in the whole world there was only one person who could have made Ye Tianxie change like that in an instant.

That rainy night… at the very moment he shouted for Xian’er, a voice that Ye Tianxie could hear and Su Feifei could not had reached his ear — the voice that haunted him waking and sleeping, the one he could never forget as long as he lived.

That voice was why he had accepted Su Feifei.

Even now he could not be certain whether he had accepted her for Xian’er’s sake, or whether those few short words of Xian’er’s had opened a door in his heart and let him take, without further scruple, a girl who had in fact stirred him long before… Perhaps it was both.

Xian’er… so long as you can come back, I am willing to try anything at all… so long as you can come back.

Gently lifting Xiaoxi’s two slender arms away, Ye Tianxie got out of bed without a sound and left the room. He did not notice that the moment the door closed behind him, Xiaoxi’s hands quietly gathered the blanket in and drew it back against her chest.

A short while later he came back with a small heap of clothes. Setting them down at the edge of the bed, he shook Xiaoxi’s shoulder lightly. “Xiaoxi, are you awake?”

“Brother…” Xiaoxi answered him with her voice, and put a pale little arm out from under the blanket, wanting to be held.

He lifted Xiaoxi out from under the blanket. The purple dress she had been wearing was soaked through and she had nothing on now — but the temperature of her skin carried no abnormal heat or cold, which set Ye Tianxie’s mind at rest a little; it proved at least that she had not caught a chill or run a fever from her long time out in the rain.

“Here. New clothes.”

The clothes Ye Tianxie had brought ran from underthings to outerwear, complete in every particular, and every one of them white. And they fitted… remarkably well.

It was plainly the first time Ye Tianxie had ever dressed a little girl, and it cost him no small effort. Xiaoxi kept her eyes closed and stayed quiet under his hands. By the time he was getting the dress over her head, Su Feifei had finally woken; she got up with her eyes still hazy from sleep and watched him dressing Xiaoxi.

The white one-piece dress had a strikingly beautiful shape to it… and strangely, that white dress gave Su Feifei a faint, hazy impression she could not quite pin down, as though a thin halo of light hung floating around it — though when she looked closely there was nothing there at all. Su Feifei naturally put it down to the blur of having just woken. Watching Ye Tianxie finish getting the dress on Xiaoxi, she could not hold her curiosity in any longer, and asked, “Tianxie, why do you have girls’ clothes here?”

Ye Tianxie’s hands paused. Then he gently smoothed out the creases in Xiaoxi’s dress and said, smiling, “These are the clothes Xian’er wore when she was small.”

The clothes Xian’er wore when she was small…

So they had been together since they were both very young?

“……” Su Feifei said nothing more, only watched Ye Tianxie quietly, and then asked in a small voice, “Do you like children very much?”

“What makes you say that?” Ye Tianxie asked.

“Look at how good you are to Xiaoxi. It’s like… like she was your own precious daughter,” Su Feifei said with a small laugh. A girl who had arrived on a rainy night, and he had shown her a side this gentle — holding her while she slept, finding her clothes, dressing her himself.

“Because she’s the one Xian’er brought.” Ye Tianxie answered her honestly, carrying Xiaoxi over to the edge of the bed and putting her shoes on for her.

Because of Xian’er…

Su Feifei’s cheeks puffed out slightly, and her memory drifted back to the night before. Every sentence he had said to her then, every word of it, she remembered with perfect clarity. Very likely she would not forget it for the rest of her life. His accepting her so suddenly was not because his feelings for his Xian’er had gone; on the contrary, they had not faded by the smallest fraction.

“You obviously care about your Xian’er so much… so why did you want me to be your girlfriend? Are you—” Su Feifei worked to keep the hurt and unease out of her voice. What she wanted to say was: are you playing a joke on me, or was it just an impulse? But in the end she did not have the courage to get it out.

“Secret.” Ye Tianxie gave her a gentle, thoroughly unreadable smile.

His answer made Su Feifei want very much to lose her temper about it, but that gentle smile of his made it impossible to be truly angry, so she could only pretend to be cross, give a small snort, and run back to her own room to change.

Xiaoxi’s breakfast was fed to her by Ye Tianxie as well. When Xiaoxi held her chopsticks in a daze, not knowing how to use them, and could not see with those closed eyes where the food she was supposed to eat had gone, Ye Tianxie sat down beside her and fed her a little at a time with a small spoon, testing the temperature each time before it reached her small mouth.

The indulgence toward Xiaoxi that came through in every one of those tiny gestures had Su Feifei envious and jealous in spite of herself — she even found herself wishing that the girl Ye Tianxie was feeding so carefully were her.

Is it because she’s the girl his Xian’er entrusted to him… I really would like to meet this Xian’er. He cares about her that much, so why would he say what he said to me… and having said it, why doesn’t he avoid mentioning Xian’er in front of me at all?

Su Feifei ate her breakfast in silence, quietly turning over what was on her mind.

(End of Chapter 198)