Chapter 11 Look Back in the Temple
"They say there was a village in the Northern Kingdom..."
Xie Linmu cut in. "Why tell a story about the Northern Kingdom?"
I pinched the hand holding mine, to make him shut up. He turned his head and looked at me, a smile in his brows and eyes. "If My Lady is speaking, of course I have to listen."
I held down a laugh and went on listening to Shen Yiluo.
"In the village there was a woman in red. Night after night, songs and music..."
"Holy shit!" I looked at Qiao Qingmiao, dressed all in red. The fine hairs on my skin were about to stand up. "Can you change colors?"
"Stop keeping on interrupting her!" Qiao Qingmiao said softly. "Go on."
"The woman in red sang in a way that was deeply strange. Everyone who heard it heard a different sound. Crying, or laughter, or hysteria close to death. The people in the village found it odd, because they found that everyone had seen her, yet not one person had seen her in daylight."
A breeze blew in through the temple door and added a little chill. I shivered and leaned closer to Xie Linmu. This one was listening extremely seriously, and seemed to have forgotten the words just spoken about protecting me.
"That night, a child named Xiaoyu'er got up to use the toilet. Half asleep, the child felt a pair of eyes not far off staring without a blink. A chill rose along his back. He pulled up his pants and, as if ghost-led, walked over."
The story scared me so badly I kept burrowing into Xie Linmu's arms. Xie Linmu narrowed his eyes a little, held the side of my waist, and said quietly by my ear, "My Lady smells so good."
My face went red. At once I did not feel afraid. I hung on his leg, covered my face, and kept listening.
"A faint red light showed in the grass. The farther in he walked, the more real the child's crying became. Xiaoyu'er picked up a wooden stick, pushed the bushes open, and at once shook all over with cold fear, because..."
Shen Yiluo's eyes were opened extremely wide. Without noticing, I stared without moving at those eyes like whirlpools. All at once she lowered her voice. "It was a woman in red, covered in blood."
I shuddered and could not help looking toward Qiao Qingmiao. The corner of Qiao Qingmiao's mouth hooked slightly. The voice was clear and cold. "But that woman was staring hard behind Xiaoyu'er."
Curiosity was pulled up in me. "What was behind him?"
Qiao Qingmiao smiled in a strange way. "Look back..."
My whole body jerked hard. Even though I was extremely afraid inside, I still turned my head as if ghost-led.
"..."
Warm lips pressed on. Xie Linmu smiled, looking pleased. "Still teasing Big Brother?"
"Are you sick or not."
I pushed him. It looked like Xie Linmu found it even more fun. "You really are like an apple."
"You are like a banana."
"What am I like?"
"A banana."
Xie Linmu looked at me as if this was funny. "Where?"
"..."
Shen Yiluo burst out laughing at the two of us. "Are the two of you children?"
I pulled my mouth aside. "A child does not know as much as he does."
The door of the ruined temple was not solid. The cold wind pushed harder through the cracks and rattled the broken door in the black night.
Qiao Qingmiao stared at the broken walls, and the wind through them sounded bleak. "That year, when it was unknown whether I was alive or dead, I was hiding in a ruined temple."
Shen Yiluo's hand trembled. The expression was complicated.
Qiao Qingmiao looked at that look. It seemed truly pained. "If I had known then that you liked me too, I would have found every way to send word that I was still alive, and not let you wait for nothing for two years, for me, alive or dead unknown."
The corner of Shen Yiluo's mouth drew a thin smile. "If you had truly died, I would not have lived on alone either."
I was moved by how serious the two of them looked, and I grew sad too. I remembered the day Xie Linmu said he would marry me, and suddenly asked, "Do you have anything you especially regret, and want to go back and make up?"
"Yes. I hate that we met so late." Shen Yiluo looked at Qiao Qingmiao. "I want to be with you the way the Emperor and the Empress are, childhood sweethearts."
After a moment, Xie Linmu spoke too. "I never said I liked you. I never let you feel a childhood-sweetheart love that shook heaven and earth."
Shen Yiluo cut in. "So it is not going back to burn her Storybook. Feelings wasted. Feelings wasted."
Qiao Qingmiao curved the corners of the eyes. "And you?"
I turned to look at Xie Linmu. I felt that saying it now could really make up, more or less, for the regret of that year.
"That year, when you climbed the wall and came to say you would marry me, I should have told you properly how much I liked you, and how set I was, without wavering, on marrying you. "
His brows and eyes looked like shock at what I had never said aloud. For a long time he stayed silent and did not speak.
Did he even know that I, too, had been One Glance, Ten Thousand Years, and how much loss I had hidden in those days when I was taken for having married him only because I had to.
It really did hurt.