Chapter Twelve
Dust-Bound Ties Thin as Paper (3)
A fifteen-year-old Vanguard Commander was not someone many people would spare a thought for.
The shadows drawn out by the candlelight gathered over most of the bed curtains. At night, only the military physician’s apprentice remained beside him to keep watch. Where was anyone to find ginseng to keep him alive? There were barely a few roots in the entire military camp, and he was in no position to receive any. He had led a cavalry unit through the winter woods, their straw rain capes soaked through, as they charged through the fire-ravaged forest to launch a surprise attack on the enemy. Only two men had returned, and even that was thanks to the horses’ uncanny instincts. One was dead. The other was still struggling to hold on here.
From time to time, the apprentice would speak to him, making sure the Vanguard Commander remained conscious and did not actually die.
The thick smoke had passed down his throat and scorched his eyes. Amid a raging fever, he tilted his head back and stared into the darkness before him.
“I... have a younger sister,” he said slowly. “She’s terribly domineering. Every time I leave home, she forces me to swear that I won’t die, that I won’t die before her. She makes me swear the most vicious oaths, swear by heaven itself. Little brother, if I die, she won’t survive either.”
Such a small girl, unable to see in the dark, and so beautiful, too. Without him, how could she possibly survive in this world?
After a hundred battles, the iron armor of the battlefield lies in tatters. If even iron armor could be shattered, human bones were worth less than rotten mud.
If death was truly fated, who could stop it?
That night, the military physician’s apprentice listened as he spoke in detail about what his younger sister liked and disliked. He could even indicate between two fingers how much her hair grew each month. He remained conscious throughout because he remembered what Zhaozhao had said.
Ge, if you die in battle, I’ll smash my head against a wall, hang myself, drink poison, roll around on iron nails, and torture myself to death.
She had said, Ge, do you know? I have only you.
Of course he knew. Rather than be left uncared for, starve to death, or suffer abuse at someone else’s hands, she would find every possible means to follow him.
Zhaozhao had been born with a streak of ruthlessness. She had inherited it all from him.
...
Shen Ce stood beside the bookshelf, fully conscious of everything unfolding before him. He truly had to admire his past self for being able to maintain his mental faculties throughout such a severe injury and infection.
He genuinely felt feverish, yet his body temperature was normal.
His eyes, supposedly “scorched by smoke,” had recovered enough that he could vaguely make out some of his surroundings. He made his way to the bed, but the moment he touched the mattress, pain struck him. There were no wounds on his body, yet he felt the sharp pain of knife cuts, as though his flesh had been slashed open.
One cut ran down his arm to the bone. This was the very spot where Zhaozhao had pressed her face against him last night.
He had been wise not to see anyone yesterday. It was not just that Zhaozhao must never learn of this. No one could be allowed to see him like this. If his family discovered how serious his condition was and took him to a doctor, they would find that there was no cure. It was all an unspeakable hallucination.
Judging by how quickly his vision was recovering, this was only temporary. He would be better in a day or two.
He had only just attained the rank of Vanguard Commander. He was still a long way from being enfeoffed as a prince and granted a noble title. No wonder everyone wanted to stop him, stand in his way, and talk him out of it. The road ahead truly was a mountain of blades, with a sea of blood consuming his body.
His shirt had been soaked through with sweat several times already. With great effort, he raised an arm that felt as though its wounds had split open, and shifted a leg that seemed broken, then looked toward the teacup on the desk. He needed to find a way to get even a single sip of water.
Cold sweat poured down him. His throat had been “injured” by the smoke, and he unconsciously went through the motions of swallowing water, his Adam’s apple moving twice.
Suddenly, he remembered the theater room, where her lips had kissed him right here. He remembered the faintly restrained sound of her breathing as she kissed his Adam’s apple.
***
Zhaozhao saw him again two days later.
Everyone had agreed to go swimming on the rooftop, but she had been afraid of water since birth, so she arrived late. Unexpectedly, he, who had vanished without a trace, showed up. Zhaozhao was wearing an off-the-shoulder one-piece dress, making her the only girl by the pool not dressed in swimwear. He, too, was the only man who had not draped a bath towel over himself.
Having just recovered from a serious illness, he seemed short on strength, leaning lightly against the edge of the bar. The tips of his pure cotton shirt collar were not stiff, but rather soft, folding slightly at the neckline. His fingers were long and slender, and they too seemed to have relaxed, resting beside his glass. His fingertips kept sliding along the edge of the brown coaster as he listened to his older female cousin, Shen Jiayan, speak.
She came around the corner. At first, Shen Ce could not see her, but she saw him first. She also saw something rarely witnessed: a trace of gentleness in him. So he was not gentle only with her. At that moment, he had his face turned slightly to one side as he listened to his cousin saying something, his eyes seeming to be suffused with a soft light, as though he were smiling.
Seeing him looking so ill, she had softened toward him when she first arrived. But then she saw how harmoniously he and her cousin were getting along, and remembered what the two of them had secretly done in the basement a few days earlier, hiding it from everyone. Only then did she realize that what existed between him and her was something they did not want brought into the light, something even less than the usual ambiguity between two people.
“Zhaozhao’s here.” Someone noticed her.
Everyone called her Zhaozhao to her face. Her older sister was called Da Zhaozhao to distinguish between them.
Zhaozhao could feel him looking at her. She turned her face at an angle, pretending not to have noticed Shen Ce. “I just came to see you all. I’ll leave in a bit. You all know I don’t swim.”
Shen Jiayan, however, left the bar as soon as she saw her. “What kind of thing is it to come and leave right away?”
Her cousin insisted that she stay. Zhaozhao could hardly turn around and walk out in a huff, so she sat idly at a distance from the swimming pool.
“Still angry?” Shen Ce chose the nearest seat beside her, leaned back against the armrest of the lounge chair, and asked.
It was an entirely unfamiliar male voice, low and hoarse. Because he seemed to lack the strength to speak, it sounded even deeper and darker.
If she had not seen that it was him, Zhaozhao would certainly have mistaken him for a stranger. She looked toward Shen Ce before she could stop herself. It did not sound like a cold. A cold could not do this. Even the most severe loss of voice or change in one's voice would not be enough to cause such a difference.
Shen Ce guessed what had surprised her and smiled. “You’ll get used to it once you’ve heard it a few times.”
Zhaozhao did her best not to look at his face, or at his smile.
“How long do I have to sit here before you’ll talk to me?” he asked again.
Zhaozhao gazed at the water in the swimming pool, lips pressed together, and did not respond.
Looking at her profile, Shen Ce suddenly realized that she was even more beautiful from this angle. At this moment, she did not resemble the moon, either. Her nose was high-bridged, too, but had a girl's delicate refinement, narrow and slender, with the tip turned up ever so slightly. Like the corners of her lips, which also curved upward just a little.
The beauty is bewitching, yet graceful and serene.
She had been stared at by people since childhood, but being looked at by others and being looked at by Shen Ce were entirely different things.
A string inside her was taut, drawn tighter and tighter under the pressure of his gaze.
Just before the string was about to snap, he suddenly left. Zhaozhao did not dare turn around to look after him, afraid he would see how much she cared. She continued to sit with her back straight, watching the pool. Waves of blue water reflected from the pool floor surged up against the white poolside, one after another, then receded.
About half an hour later, Zhaozhao was called to try on her bridesmaid dress. Shen Jiayan accompanied her.
They were in a reception room on the first floor, which had an adjoining suite with a sitting area, a changing room, and a bathroom for convenience when changing clothes. She had met the tailor earlier, who had specially flown to Montreal to take her measurements.
“Shen Ce is really difficult to get along with. No matter what I talk to him about, the conversation never goes anywhere. Luckily, we have one person we both know, so at least we have something to talk about,” her cousin told her in front of a mirror that stretched across half the wall.
“Who?” Zhaozhao's mind was elsewhere. She looked at the formal dress in the mirror, afraid of hearing the specifics of their conversation, and even more afraid that her cousin might ask her for advice and inadvertently reveal some hint that there was something ambiguous between her and Shen Ce.
“You,” her cousin said with a smile, as though she had answered an extremely obvious question. Then she teased her. “When you arrived, we were talking about how you're afraid of water.”
Zhaozhao felt for the topmost button at the back of the dress and murmured, “Mm.”
Her heart was like the water in the swimming pool just now, waves pushing and jostling against one another, surging toward the edge. Suddenly, it was full to the brim, about to overflow.
“He really likes you,” her cousin said.
“Does he?” Zhaozhao instinctively tried to cover it up. “I never got that impression.”
“If it weren't for your relationship with him, you two would actually have the most to talk about. Who knows, something might even have developed between you.”
“How could that be?” No matter how she felt around for it, Zhaozhao could not find the matching loop for the topmost button at the back. “He seems to have a girlfriend.” She tried her best to distance herself from Shen Ce. “I've met some of his friends in Hong Kong. His friends mentioned a girl who studies at Cambridge just like he does. They often go to places together and come back together, and they even keep their plans hidden from their families. For all I know, they might already be living together.” To make absolutely sure she would not be found out, she added one final thing. “He just doesn't want to admit it.”
Her cousin was still disappointed when a man's figure appeared in the mirror. It was Shen Ce.
Only then did she remember that he was a groomsman, and if he was going to try on his outfit, he should be doing so at roughly the same time as them. How had she forgotten? Shen Ce seemed to have only just noticed the two of them. He paused briefly, saw that Zhaozhao had finished putting on her dress, then continued inside. From a single antique sofa embroidered with gold thread, he picked up a tie and turned his back to the two sisters.
Zhaozhao had found the little loop at last, but her fingers kept slipping, and she could not fasten the button.
She wanted to ask her cousin to help her tie it, but her cousin was just as guilty as she was about having nearly been caught discussing someone else's private affairs behind his back. She exchanged pleasantries with Shen Ce. “Perfect timing. You can keep Zhaozhao company. I'll head upstairs.”
She fled in a hurry.
Zhaozhao continued trying. Her eyes were lowered beneath her lashes, hoping only that he would leave soon. She had completely forgotten that she could leave, too. It was just a button. She could go outside and find the tailor.
Shen Ce draped his tie over the high back of the sofa, walked over, and closed both doors.
Zhaozhao saw him in the mirror and instinctively took a step to the side, making it look as though she were giving him room to look at himself in the mirror.
“I have a girlfriend?”
He came to stand behind her.
The change in Shen Ce's voice gave him an unexpectedly unfamiliar quality, making this place feel even more like the setting for a clandestine rendezvous.
“We were just talking. Why were you eavesdropping?” she whispered, afraid that someone outside the door might hear.
Shen Ce moved her fingers aside and fastened the slippery little button for her. It was a tiny, round thing, so small that even he, a grown man, could barely hold it between his fingers. He asked in a similarly low voice, “Eavesdropping?”
“If you don't show yourself, isn't that eavesdropping?”
He nodded. “Two tailors, six apprentices, and four maids, all eavesdropping together. Quite a gathering.”
...
“If we don't go in soon, there'll be illegitimate children on the way,” he asked with a smile. “How many boys and how many girls?”
The way he asked made it sound as though she and he...
Zhaozhao ignored him.
Ever since she learned that he had been talking about her the entire time he was beside the pool with her cousin, the knot of frustration in her heart had loosened considerably. The moment she caught sight of him in the mirror, she was back in that secretive world again. The secret world that belonged to him and her.
“Who knows? Maybe there really are some,” she retorted, refusing to concede.
Shen Ce did not argue with her. Instead, he leaned forward slightly and pressed her against the mirror. Ever since he had entered, he had been looking at the expanse of bare skin exposed by her strapless formal dress, the broad stretches of white across her chest and back that dazzled his eyes. Zhaozhao's palms had already grown sweaty. She pressed half a handprint onto the immaculate mirror, and her fingertips left several smaller marks as well.
Just as he was about to kiss the back of her neck, she forcibly turned halfway around, but she could not escape the space enclosed by his outstretched arms.
“If you can't fasten it, forget it,” she raised her voice, speaking for the benefit of those outside. “You'd better attend to your own tie. I'll do it myself.”
He did not answer. He simply watched her put on the act.
“You were harsh with me that day,” she whispered reproachfully, her chest rising and falling, the edges of her shoulder blades pressed against the mirror. Being with him was always like this, one moment sending her to heaven, the next plunging her into the depths. And with people outside the door, she could not even raise her voice.
Shen Ce had anticipated that she would want to settle old scores.
“Were you in such a bad mood because you were so upset about being ill?” Zhaozhao asked.
He had anticipated, too, that she would worry about him and find excuses for his behavior.
“It was a minor ailment,” he replied casually.
“Then why did you disappear for two whole days?”
“I had a lot to deal with,” he said with a smile. “What was I supposed to do?”
“What could I do?” Unable to argue with him, she complained in a low voice, “Who knows whether anything you say is true or false?”
Shen Ce stood before her, still with very little color in his lips, yet he pressed them together and looked at her with a smile.
His palm slid up from her chin to cup her face. He leaned closer. When she felt that his lips were about to touch hers, her entire upper body stiffened, and her eyelashes trembled. She wanted to close her eyes, but stubbornly held them open. He watched her, wondering how much longer she could keep up the act.
His gaze made her waist go weak. Then she remembered that there were so many people on the other side of the wall, all the tailors and apprentices waiting for the two of them to change into their formal outfits and have their measurements adjusted. Surely they would be listening even more intently to the sounds coming from the fitting room.
She waited until her heart tightened in repeated spasms, as though she could feel her blood struggling to flow properly, moving through her veins in uneven, halting pulses. Lowering her gaze from his chin, which she had been looking at straight on, she did something she had always wanted to do but had never managed to accomplish. She pressed her lips against his Adam's apple.
The Adam's apple beneath her lips trembled.
Zhaozhao parted her lips and lightly pressed them against that spot. A constant buzzing and humming filled her ears, the sound shaken and stirred by the pounding of her own heartbeat. When she gently swept her tongue over it, his Adam's apple moved faintly up and down in response.
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