Chapter 9 While We Are Young
Steam rose in thin threads from tea just heated. Shen Yiluo had the sense to withdraw and left only Xie Linmu and me.
We were an old married pair, but for several years I had not seen the look that once set my heart surging. Now he stood before me, and I grew nervous.
After a long while Xie Linmu suddenly spoke. "Song Huanhuan."
I even felt his voice was pleasant. I looked up toward it. "Ah?"
Xie Linmu's brows and eyes held a smile, but he was no longer so loose. He started to look restrained and proper. "Let us sneak out of the palace."
"Ah?" I had read too much Storybook, so I actually thought he meant to elope with me. "No, no. How can you cast the realm aside? I am not some person who ruins the state and harms the people. How can you pick one of two and elope with me!"
"Ruin the state and harm the people? Pick one of two?" Xie Linmu's brow tips rose. With every sentence he came a little closer. "The word elope sounds rather thrilling."
Before I could react, Xie Linmu seized my hand. The youth had tied a high tail of hair. His back was straight. Skin like white jade was set with black bright eyes, full of light then. "While we are young, let us elope once."
He dragged me running out of the bedchamber. The wind around us brought warmth. Sunlight lay across his face and shoulders.
I suddenly found that the male lead's face I imagined in the Storybook I looked at every day seemed to be this very face.
A youth in bright clothes on a spirited horse. Black hair bound up, right in his glory.
The earth-shaking lead had to be you. The end of a good dream had to be you too. No matter how many times we started over, even if memory was truly lost, in the end it was still you.
You were the liking that had shown itself clear back in my youth.