For an entire day, Du Lai did nothing. He lay in the ruined bamboo hut like a man waiting to die.

Fetching water, catching birds, fishing, digging for clams, setting traps, weaving rope—all the tasks he usually did without thinking had suddenly lost all meaning.

The sun crept up, then crept down. To him it was nothing but a shift in light and shadow. He lay quietly, ate nothing, drank nothing, said nothing, and had no desire to engage with anyone.

Fu Miaoxue scolded him first—told him he had no conscience, no heart—then broke into tears in the middle of her scolding, cried for a while, and went back to scolding.

Du Lai didn’t stir.

When the moon rose, Fu Miaoxue tugged carefully at his arm, her voice small and wronged. “Du Lai, I’m hungry.”

Hungry? A whole day without food—of course she was. But without fire, even if she could stomach raw water, she couldn’t eat raw meat.

Du Lai was hungry too. But more than hungry, he was numb. He lay with his eyes shut, ignoring Fu Miaoxue’s admission of weakness.

The night deepened. Something outside—some night bird—was calling, long and low, eerily plaintive in the vast dark.

Finally, the proud Fu Miaoxue’s resolve crumbled. She pleaded softly, “Du Lai, can you get the fire going again… please…”

Du Lai lay on his side and paid her no attention.

Fu Miaoxue huddled closer to him and stared bleakly out at the shadows beyond the hut. Without fire, there was no warmth—and no sense of safety either. The wind moved through the grass and brush, and every dark shape became a monster, claws spread in the black.

She could feel his coldness and despair. But she truly couldn’t bring herself to go back to that cage.

“Du Lai… Du Lai…” She pressed against him, each word more choked than the last. “Haven’t we been doing fine every day? Why do you want to leave so badly? We can stay here… free, happy, living as we like. Don’t worry—we won’t be stuck here forever. Just a little longer… Once everyone forgets about us, we can start over somewhere new, build a new life…”

Every word reached him. He had nothing to say back to any of it.

To him, Fu Miaoxue was purely selfish. Just because she was unwilling to go back, she was stripping away his life along with hers. *A little longer*—how long? If she wanted to wait until Fu Lisheng forgot about her, she’d probably be waiting until he died. Ten years? Twenty? Was he supposed to completely vanish from the world for twenty years?

How was that any different from prison?

For a pampered young mistress, apparently other people’s lives weren’t worth much.

“Du Lai, I really can’t go back… I don’t want to go back…” Her voice dropped lower, full of sorrow. “I don’t want to be locked up again. That place—besides the housekeeper, there’s nothing but bodyguards. Nothing else. I couldn’t go to school, couldn’t go shopping, couldn’t go to amusement parks, couldn’t go anywhere with people in it… When Father and Mother died, I had to stay there to put Grandfather at ease. I had to. There are so many people out there who want to hurt me—if I hadn’t ended up on this island by accident, I might have been locked in there forever…”

“And what does any of that have to do with me?” Du Lai finally replied, his voice flat.

Fu Miaoxue stilled. She looked at his back. “…You don’t like me anymore?”

Du Lai let out a quiet, humorless sound and said nothing more, eyes still closed.

Fu Miaoxue asked, “Not even a little?”

No answer.

Wronged, frightened, resentful, and hurting—all of it gnawing at her from the inside. Fu Miaoxue couldn’t understand how she could be so good to Du Lai and have him not like her.

“Scoundrel…” She wiped her tears away, bit her lip, and stared at the back of his head. The more she stared the angrier she became—until something in her snapped, and she launched herself at him like an enraged cat.

“Scoundrel!!!”

Du Lai let out a cry of pain. She had bitten into his shoulder hard enough to nearly break the skin.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!”

He twisted and shoved her away with force.

Fu Miaoxue bit his hand instead.

Du Lai had no choice but to pin her down with both hands. She twisted her head left and right, trying to bite him again, but held in place, she couldn’t reach him—so she screamed at the top of her lungs: “Hit me then! Go on, hit me! If you don’t hit me, it means you like me! You DO like me!!!”

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