“Say something if it hurts.”

Candlelight burned in the bedchamber. The two of them sat facing each other on the bed. Li Wu’s brow was deeply furrowed as he dipped his fingertip in medicinal salve and applied it to the bruises on Shen Zhuxi’s neck.

The moment the cool ointment made contact with the dark marks left by those fingers, Shen Zhuxi couldn’t help but burst into tears.

“It hurts…” she said through a sob.

“Alright, alright, I’ll be gentler.” Li Wu’s verbal reassurance was perfunctory and impatient, while his hands were delicate and careful.

As he lightly dabbed the ointment on with a tapping motion, he looked up to check her expression: “How about now?”

“It hurts…”

Shen Zhuxi looked at him with an aggrieved expression, her clear, almond-shaped eyes shimmering with tears.

The rippling light in her eyes affected his heartbeat, which in turn affected the steadiness of his fingers. He looked away from her and grumbled, “If you could cry out gold pearls, that’d be one thing — but you can’t, so every drop you cry is a drop lost, and all of it is my money!”

“Why would my tears be your money?” Shen Zhuxi said quietly. “Water doesn’t cost anything.”

She was clearly talking to herself, but Li Wu shot back at once: “Does the firewood to boil the water cost nothing?”

Shen Zhuxi had no comeback for that.

“Do I not deserve wages for slaving away in the kitchen for you?” Li Wu pressed on. “I cook you good food so you’ll have the strength to cry?!”

“I can just pay you wages, can’t I?” Shen Zhuxi looked at him, aggrieved.

She didn’t want to cry either — but these wretched tears just wouldn’t listen!

“Do I look like I need the money?” Li Wu puffed out his chest.

Shen Zhuxi stared at this insufferable person with wide, unblinking eyes.

Had he forgotten what dubious side work he’d once relied on to pull himself out of poverty?

She had gone out of her way to cover for him, and now here he was, strutting about with his chest puffed out — even begrudging her a few tears for wasting the family’s firewood!

It seemed men truly were not to be counted on once they’d made their fortune!

“My neck hurts and you’re still scolding me…”

Shen Zhuxi’s tears broke free, and the second half of her sentence dissolved from tearful murmuring straight into full-blown crying.

Li Wu saw the situation turning bad and was about to salvage it, but Shen Zhuxi had already turned away and flung herself face-down on the pillow, sobbing her heart out.

“I —” Li Wu let out a full-strength expletive.

“Now you’re cursing me —”

Shen Zhuxi cried even harder, wailing now.

“Shen Zhuxi!”

Li Wu’s temples were throbbing.

“Waaah…”

“Shen little fool!”

“Waaah waaah…”

“Ridiculous woman!”

“Waaah waaah waaah…”

“Alright, I was wrong, I didn’t mean it, I wasn’t cursing you — I was cursing myself!” Li Wu got off the bed and crouched down in front of Shen Zhuxi, bringing his face level with hers as she refused to look at him, coaxing her with frantic desperation. “Stop wailing — if you keep wailing, I’ll start wailing too —”

“Let me hear you wail once then.” Shen Zhuxi lifted her tear-blurred eyes to look at him.

“…”

Li Wu looked at those already-drooping corners of her mouth — ready to resume wailing at any moment — and gritted his teeth:

“…Waaah.”

“Now bark like a duck.”

Li Wu’s face went black: “Shen Zhuxi, are you itching for trouble?”

Shen Zhuxi buried her head again: “Waaaaah —”

“Quack! Quack quack!”

Li Wu’s scowl was a match for the bottom of a pot that hadn’t seen soap in a year, yet Shen Zhuxi finally broke through tears into laughter.

Her almond eyes, still glimmering with tears, curved into a pair of crescent moons — brighter and more radiant than all the gems in the world piled into a single heap.

The most beautiful treasure on earth.

“…Happy now?” Li Wu stared at her eyes.

“Happy.” Shen Zhuxi gave a contented nod.

“…Little fool.”

A flick of a finger landed on her forehead. Shen Zhuxi let out a small cry and tears gathered in her eyes again.

“You hit me!”

“So what if I did? Haven’t I said —” Li Wu gave her a casual sidelong glance, and his ointment-coated fingertip reached toward her neck again. “I’m the type to hit women in bed.”

Shen Zhuxi scrambled to get off the bed. Li Wu held her firmly in place with one hand.

“Don’t move —”

He spoke with more force; Shen Zhuxi didn’t dare move.

He dipped his finger in the ointment and dabbed it lightly, point by point, on the bruises on her neck. Against her fair complexion, the bruises stood out all the darker — the marks were as wide as a finger, and nearly encircled the entirety of her neck like a collar.

Li Wu looked at it, and his face went the color of iron. He deeply regretted that Yufeng had died so quickly.

“It hurts…” Shen Zhuxi said cautiously, watching his expression.

Li Wu lightened his touch.

“It hurts…”

Li Wu lightened his touch further.

“It hurts…” She looked at him with a pitiful expression, mewing like a small cat.

“My hand isn’t even touching you yet!” Li Wu caught her little act and glared at her.

Shen Zhuxi let out a regretful hum through her nose.

“Alright — a couple more days of this and it should heal up.” Li Wu screwed the cap back on the ointment container and said, “Don’t go out these next few days. If anyone sees the injury on your neck, even if I jumped into the Yellow River I couldn’t wash myself clean.”

“…At any rate, you’re already the type who hits women.” Shen Zhuxi muttered.

“That’s in bed.” Li Wu emphasized.

“A hit’s a hit, what does it matter where…”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.” Li Wu stood up, ointment in hand.

“I’m already seventeen…” Shen Zhuxi said, affronted.

“Only seventeen.” Li Wu gave her a look. “I’m twenty-two — a person isn’t grown until they’ve read widely and mastered at least one hundred and sixty-eight positions, the way I have.”

“I’ve never heard of these one hundred and sixty-eight positions,” Shen Zhuxi said, puzzled. “What are they about?”

“About the matters of human life — about where you come from and how you came to be —”

“Taoist philosophy?” Shen Zhuxi exclaimed in surprise. “I have never heard of any such one hundred and sixty-eight positions in Taoist philosophy!”

“There’s plenty you don’t know yet. I’ll teach you sometime.”

“Alright,” Shen Zhuxi nodded with great solemnity. “I want to learn.”

Li Wu had barely stepped one foot over the threshold when Shen Zhuxi called out from behind: “Where are you going?”

“You’re done with the ointment — shouldn’t I put it back?” Li Wu looked at her in puzzlement.

“I’ll go with you.”

Shen Zhuxi hurriedly got down from the bed to put her shoes on.

“It’s only a few steps away. Why come with me?”

“I want to go with you!” Shen Zhuxi was afraid he’d leave her behind; she didn’t bother putting her embroidered shoes on properly, and came running over with her heels crushing down the backs.

Shen Zhuxi followed Li Wu to the neighboring room to put the ointment away, and then shadowed his every step as he made his way to the back courtyard, watching as he drew water and washed his hands.

In a vague, dreamlike sort of way, Li Wu felt rather like a mother duck with a small duckling waddling along at her tail.

“Why do you keep following me around?” Li Wu asked.

“I need to use the privy…” Shen Zhuxi said with a fidgety, bashful air.

“Then go — it’s not as if I’m the chamber pot.” Li Wu said irritably.

“I don’t dare go by myself. You… you come with me.” Shen Zhuxi’s face flushed red.

“Come with you? And do what?” Li Wu’s eyes went wide. “Share the chamber pot, one half each?”

“You wait outside!” Shen Zhuxi said crossly. “Just talk to me — that’s all I need!”

Li Wu had no choice but to accompany her to the outhouse. And this ridiculous woman made it sound so easy — “just talk to me, that’s all” — but in practice she put him through his paces:

“Move farther away, don’t stand so close!”

“Li Wu? Li Wu? Where are you? Come closer!”

Li Wu shuffled further away, then shuffled back, and after going back and forth several times finally lost his patience.

“Shen Zhuxi, are you deliberately toying with me?”

“What’s fun about you…” Shen Zhuxi’s lowered voice still carried all the way to Li Wu’s ears.

“Try it and find out,” Li Wu raised an eyebrow. “No charge.”

“No no no no no —”

Li Wu could perfectly imagine the scene inside: her shaking her head back and forth in a frantic panic, like a rattle drum.

This ridiculous woman — why hadn’t she figured it out yet?

Was he not being obvious enough? Or were his muscles not obvious enough?

No — it had to be the fault of that wretched old embroiderer who stitched that phoenix pattern for him.

He was still mulling over how to show off his many virtues when that little fool inside the outhouse let out a quavering cry:

“Li Wu? Are you still there? Why did you go quiet?”

“How am I gone?!” Li Wu was two seconds from grabbing that little fool by the stem and wringing it off. “Even if the sky fell, I’d still be here!”

Finally, after no small amount of ordeal, Shen Zhuxi finished her business.

She came out looking as though she’d just returned from the gates of the underworld.

“What were you doing in there?” Li Wu frowned.

“I kept feeling like…” she said, still shaken to the core, “…a hand was about to reach up from inside the bucket…”

“Whose hand?”

“Yufeng’s hand…”

“What would he want down there? Does he come back as a ghost just to collect night soil?”

That image was so absurd that it knocked the fear right out of Shen Zhuxi’s mind — only to be instantly replaced by a surge of intense revulsion, overwhelming what little remained of the shock and unease from killing someone for the first time.

“How are you so revolting?!” she said.

“I’m revolting?” Li Wu stared at her. “You’re the one who brought it up! If that’s where his hand is coming from, then his face would be right in your…”

“Stop talking!”

Shen Zhuxi clapped her hands over her ears, her face even worse than before, and fled from Li Wu in a panic.

Li Wu was truly terrifying! A thousand times more terrifying than the dead Yufeng!

But thanks to him, Shen Zhuxi no longer feared the chamber pot.

Crude as his words were, the logic held — even if Yufeng were to come back from the dead to claim her life, the chamber pot was the last place he’d choose to crawl out of.

The chamber pot might not be frightening anymore, but the darkness that came with closing her eyes still was.

Every time Shen Zhuxi closed her eyes, the image floated up before her: the gold hairpin sliding into Yufeng’s throat, and the look on his face — mildly confused, faintly surprised.

He had never once considered that he might die by her hand.

In his eyes, she was the most unthreatening woman there was. Even women who worked the fields had killed chickens, but she had never killed so much as a chicken. He looked down on her — she could tell from the way he looked at her. To him, she was no more than an accessory attached to Fu Xuanmiao, ornamental at best, of no practical use whatsoever. Right up to the moment he breathed his last, his face wore an expression of pure disbelief.

“Li Wu…” she said quietly into the darkness. “Are you there?”

“I’m not dead yet!” Li Wu’s patience had reached its very end. “I’m right here, next to your feather duster!”

“You… come a little closer…” Shen Zhuxi said, uncertainly.

“…Really?” Li Wu’s tone shifted all at once, turning exceptionally patient and gentle. “You said so yourself, remember?”

Shen Zhuxi answered with silence.

Li Wu shifted himself across, and his body settled against the feather duster. His warmth drifted toward her through the night air, landing softly on Shen Zhuxi.

Li Wu’s presence was like the quilt she had grown accustomed to sleeping under — deeply, endlessly reassuring, and making her heart itch in a way she couldn’t quite explain.

During their flight from the famine, they had huddled together for warmth in many a cave. Once life settled down again, the feather duster had returned to its place between them.

Li Wu always liked to score verbal advantages over her — day or night, without fail — but he had never once crossed that line.

“…The feather duster.” She murmured, barely above a breath.

“What?” Li Wu hadn’t caught it, and frowned. “I didn’t touch your feather duster — feel for yourself, it’s still right here —”

“I said —”

Shen Zhuxi was deeply grateful that the night was pitch-black and impenetrable. Only in this darkness could she hide the burning heat of her face.

“Not the feather duster…” her voice grew smaller and smaller.

Silence fell over the bedchamber. A gentle breeze slipped in through the half-latched window, carrying with it the pure, dewy fragrance of the night.

The silence made Shen Zhuxi begin to panic. She didn’t even know what she was saying anymore.

“Never mind, I just said — I think it was poking me before… it’s gone now, it can stay, just leave it —”

Before Shen Zhuxi could finish, the feather duster cut an arc through the night air and, with a thud, hit some wall or another and clattered to the floor.

“Leaving it isn’t an option.” Li Wu pressed himself in closer, his voice carrying a delight he couldn’t quite conceal. “It was poking me too.”

His dark eyes gleamed with a faint, quiet light in the darkness.

Like a black leopard — unblinking, watching the prey it had its heart set on.

Shen Zhuxi’s face went even redder. She turned over and put her back to Li Wu, who was making her heart pound.

“…I’m going to sleep.” She said in a rush.

“Alright.” Li Wu reached one arm out and, with the quilt between them, drew her into the circle of his embrace. “Don’t be afraid… I’m here with you.”

They did not draw any closer than that, but the posture of his protection made her feel a boundless sense of security.

A sense that even if the sky fell, he would be there.

She came to believe, slowly, with growing certainty — that he would be.