Ye Liuchun × Bai Shating Extra: Spring River Moon

【Part One: The Mountain Moon Knows Not】

Chun Niangzi of the Chunfenghua Establishment had one peculiar rule.

Unless they were old acquaintances, she would not see visitors from Jinling.

Ye Liuchun despised Jinling.

Though she’d always believed she hated Lin’an even more.

After all, every memory she had of Lin’an was confined within the walls of the cramped Zuihong Tower — filthy, cramped, muddy. Though just beyond one wall lay the most glittering, extravagant quarter of all Lin’an, her own world consisted of nothing but dust-covered cobwebs, a musty-smelling bed, and a mother who was perpetually exhausted.

The year she turned sixteen, her mother died.

She had no money to bury her, and couldn’t bear the thought of her becoming a nameless ghost in some mass grave, so she went to the pond where her mother had drowned and washed her own face in it, then, soaked through, fished out the moon lute that had sunk there, tangled in waterweed.

Her fingers moved across the strings, damp and sticky. She had no heart left for her usual playing, and the piece “Spring River, Flowers, and Moonlit Night” came out sounding like a funeral dirge.

If her mother had still been alive, she surely would have scolded her for it.

Zhou Tan was the only good person she’d ever met in Lin’an.

But she wanted so desperately to escape that place. The moment she’d buried her mother, she’d rushed to board the first ship leaving Lin’an, only turning back to bow hastily, murmuring that she would surely repay his kindness one day.

As the ferry pulled away from the dock, the figures of Zhou Tan and his younger brother grew smaller and smaller in the eyes of the girl then still known as “Little Ye.”

Little Ye instinctively rubbed the old wooden tag hanging at her waist.

The tag itself was worth nothing, but her mother had given it to her when she was still very young.

That was the first time she’d learned that her mother had once been the wife of a government official — only her father had met with misfortune, and her mother’s own family as well, and after being implicated, they’d been stripped of status and reduced to the meanest class of servitude, dragging her down with them — she who should have been born a proper official’s daughter, reduced instead to the mud beneath other people’s feet.

Her mother had gripped her wrist tightly and told her:

Don’t let yourself fall. Don’t reveal your origins. You are the eldest daughter of an official household, of noble birth — your grandfather was a man of renown in Jinling in the previous era. You must live with dignity. You must never sell your smiles for a living.

By the end, she’d been sobbing too hard to finish.

Little Ye thought to herself that her mother surely knew, deep down, that this wish of hers could never come true.

Short of a great imperial amnesty, short of the emperor himself speaking the words, the family of a condemned official could never be freed from that status — even if she’d wished for nothing more than to live with a little dignity, earning her keep through her own two hands, sweeping floors, mending clothes, doing laundry, even that would never have been permitted.

Half out of her mind, her mother had tied that wooden tag to her sash and continued, rambling.

Little Leaf, do you know — you have a very good marriage arranged for you. It was decided between our two families, matched in the womb, back when I was first pregnant with you. When you grow up, take this tag and go find them. Their family is a great house… they’re sure to find some way to clear your status.

She hadn’t had the heart to shatter her mother’s beautiful dream.

If that family had truly still cared for the old bond, surely they would have come forward to help the moment her own family had fallen. Now that she and her mother had drifted through this degraded life for so many years, even if that family still existed, why would they ever acknowledge such an engagement?

But after her mother’s death, that flimsy old promise became the last remaining thread connecting her to her mother. She didn’t dare linger long in Lin’an — even if this fragile dream was the only thing sustaining her all the way to Jinling, to the capital, it was better than nothing.

In the long rainy season of Jinling, by the Chunfeng ferry crossing, she met the Bai family’s Thirteenth Young Master, Bai Shating, for the first time.

Zhou Tan had saved her, but though the young Zhou Tan appeared carefree on the surface, at his core he remained a disciplined, upright gentleman. She was grateful for his kindness, and swore to repay it, but she understood clearly that Zhou Tan and she belonged to different worlds — someone to be respected and honored, but never approached too closely.

The young master, on first seeing her, had let out an upward-lilting “Oh!”

“What a beautiful girl. What’s your name?”

He wore his hair pulled up high in a ponytail, carefree and innocent, always carrying a folding fan in hand, a perpetual smile on his face — elegant, sly, and yet never once making her feel offended.

His question left her blushing furiously, and she stammered a little in spite of herself.

“I— I’m called Little Ye.”

“Little Ye?” Bai Shating snapped his folding fan open with a crisp sound, and with easy familiarity pulled her toward his family’s carriage, not even asking further about who she was. “Then I’ll call you Little Leaf.”

Riding on the strength of the Bai family’s standing in Jinling, no one questioned Little Ye’s registration papers for the time being.

In his letter to Bai Shating, Zhou Tan had only vaguely mentioned her pitiable circumstances — selling herself to bury her mother — without a word about her true origins. Bai Shating likely assumed she was simply the daughter of some ordinary poor family, and arranged for her to stay in the finest guest room at the best inn in the city.

Every single day, he took her wandering aimlessly through the streets of Jinling, ostensibly searching for the owner of that wooden tag.

Sometimes, passing by the banks of the Qinhuai River, Bai Shating would strike up a warm conversation with an old woman selling plum-blossom cakes, coaxing her into a delighted smile, then buy out her entire pot and hand out the cakes to the beggar children along the road.

Little Ye and he always got the two freshest cakes straight from the pot — glutinous rice balls, pine nuts, crushed walnuts, drizzled with brown sugar syrup, steaming hot, sweet enough with just one bite to bring uncontrollable joy.

Or, passing by the Taoye Ferry crossing, listening to the sound of strings and flutes drifting from the pleasure boats on the Qinhuai River, Bai Shating would point at that hazy scattering of lantern light and pour out endless romantic tales of that world of indulgence and passion.

Bai Shating whispered conspiratorially to her: “Truth be told, I’m too timid — I’ve never actually been. Once, when Brother Liu dragged me along to the Qinhuai River, I got so moved by some girl’s tale of tragic misfortune that I not only did nothing, I gave her my entire purse… The girls there teased me about it for half a year. Even thinking back on it now, it’s mortifying.”

“How could that be embarrassing?” Little Ye had always stammered whenever she spoke with him before, but after a few days, she’d finally grown bold enough. She listened earnestly, her cheeks flushing red as she spoke. “Young Master Bai, you’re too good, too kind-hearted — that’s why their stories move you so… In truth, what they say might not always be false. It’s just that after so many years, no one ever believes them.”

She’d seen plenty of girls at Zuihong Tower crying drunkenly after the revelry ended, and among the false, flattering words, there was often a grain or two of truth mixed in — words no one ever believed, until eventually even the girls themselves stopped believing them.

But he was willing to believe. Willing to sigh for them, to weep for them. If that small, sincere kindness were ever given to her, she would treasure it for the rest of her life.

Hearing her say this, Bai Shating suddenly let the playful smile fade from his face.

In the night, his eyes reflected the glow of the lanterns, earnest and moving. “You too, Little Leaf. You’re good — kind, innocent, beautiful… You’ll have a very, very good life ahead of you. Whatever hardships you’ve known before, they’re nothing but passing clouds now.”

With that, he broke back into a smile, reaching out to wipe away a few tears that had somehow gathered on her cheek without her noticing, coaxing her gently, helplessly. “Don’t cry anymore. I’m three months older than you, by the way, so you’ll have to call me elder brother. Elder brother will buy you a flower lantern — how about that?”

In that instant, Little Ye suddenly, sharply became aware that something in his gaze had changed.

He was looking at her — not the way one looks at a child, a younger sister, someone to be looked after — but the way a man looks at a woman. Tender, full of feeling, lingering, unmistakably alluring — perhaps he himself wasn’t even aware of it.

And her own heart, at that shift, trembled with a wild, uncontainable happiness.

Little Ye had seen countless ways men looked at women. Back at Zuihong Tower, head bowed, pouring tea and serving drinks for the other girls, she’d watched men sit in the rooms with easy smiles, their gazes flippant, careless.

Only rarely, in moments of genuine passion, did that particular kind of alluring look ever surface.

Perhaps, from the very first moment she’d laid eyes on Bai Shating, some part of her had been yearning for that look, deep down.

She simply hadn’t dared admit it before — and now, at last, she’d gotten her wish.

Little Ye felt ashamed of her own baseness, and yet felt an overwhelming, uncontrollable joy all the same.

Bai Shating carried the flower lantern and walked her back to the inn. At parting, whether intentionally or not, he brushed his fingers lightly across the back of her hand, twice.

His voice was low and enchanting, a tone she’d never heard from him before.

“Rest well. Tomorrow… I’ll see you again.”

Little Ye fled back into her room, but couldn’t help herself — the moment she’d closed the door, she threw open the lattice window again, wanting one more glimpse of him.

To her surprise, Bai Shating hadn’t left at all.

He was standing exactly where they’d parted, hadn’t moved a single step.

Bai Shating looked up at her, entirely confident, as though he’d known all along she wouldn’t be able to resist opening the window, and gave her a knowing, complicit smile.

His bamboo-ribbed folding fan snapped open with a crisp sound in the quiet night, and by the dim lantern light through the lattice window, she saw four large characters written across it.

—A thousand years of glorious dissipation.

Outside, moths beat themselves tirelessly against the paper-covered lantern, wings snapping against the wooden frame, bodies falling into the dust-covered windowsill.

And the next moth, utterly indifferent to the corpse of the one before it, flew straight toward that same faint flicker of flame.

In the many nights that followed, she would think back on this scene again and again, and every time, she would painfully admit that whether or not she’d clearly seen those four characters on the fan made no difference at all to her fate — the moth was going to throw itself into the flame regardless.

In the days that followed, Bai Shating continued to take her wandering through Jinling, using the pretext of searching for the owner of her wooden tag as an excuse for their outings. But both of them knew, by now, that something had changed between them.

Such as the day fireworks lit up the Qinhuai River, and he took her hand.

Such as the day, after drinking too much, when she told him the story of her family’s ruin, and he, tipsy, wrapped his arms around her waist.

The Bai family had many daughters and few sons, fewer still raised within the household proper. Bai Shating had grown up surrounded by sisters, and had plenty of experience coaxing a girl into good spirits, tender as flowing water. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, it’s all in the past now… My own mother passed away early too. My eleventh brother, the one I was closest to as a child, disappeared somewhere, I don’t even know where… This mortal world, after all, is nothing but an endless procession of partings and reunions, joys and sorrows.”

Emboldened by the wine, he kissed her lightly on the cheek.

Little Ye’s voice trembled. “Young Master Bai…”

Bai Shating gave a low laugh. “From now on, just call me Shisan.”

He paused, then continued, “Little Leaf, didn’t your mother ever give you a name? Then let me give you one, shall I?”

She nodded without thinking. “All right.”

They were drinking on a pleasure boat at the time, the Qinhuai’s waters flowing gently, and they hadn’t even bothered to hire a boatman, letting the boat simply drift wherever the current took it.

Bai Shating found brush and paper in the cabin, looking at her with drunken, hazy eyes. “My own name — I took it from the very song you played, ‘Spring River, Flowers, and Moonlit Night’ — the frost drifts unseen through the air, the white sand on the shore blends into the night… So let’s take yours from the same place.”

He rolled up his sleeves and, with drunken abandon, wrote out those two lines of verse, then squinted at the moonlight on the river’s surface and, in one smooth stroke, wrote it down.

“The river’s water carries spring away as it nears its end…”

The white sand blended seamlessly with the moonlight, a single sheet of silver, impossible to tell apart.

The river flowed on without end, carrying spring away with it, fading gradually into nothing.

“Liuchun — Spring’s Passing—”

“A beautiful name… just like you.”

Bai Shating leaned in and kissed her. She closed her eyes, her whole body going rigid.

She thought to herself that he hadn’t said anything at all — she should have shown a bit of maidenly restraint, pushed him away.

But she couldn’t bring herself to.

The dress she wore that day had been a gift from him — gold-threaded gauze, delicate and flowing. Bai Shating ran his hand along her shoulder, sending a wave of tingling warmth through her.

The kiss trailed slowly downward along her lips.

Ye Liuchun wore the plum-blossom sachet she’d made long ago, and its faint, clean fragrance mingled with the scent of wine around them, intoxicating, entrancing.

The young master wrapped his arms around her neck, then suddenly came a little more to his senses. Breathing heavily, he lifted his head, and in his eyes was a burning desire she’d never seen there before.

But he kept his hands on her shoulders and lowered his eyes.

Ye Liuchun found herself too nervous to speak. “Young Master Bai…”

Bai Shating answered hoarsely, “Still calling me Young Master Bai?”

Her face flushed red, and with difficulty and shyness, she corrected herself. “Shisan…”

Bai Shating hummed in acknowledgment, then suddenly drew out the wooden tag he’d been helping her search for. “Actually… on the very first day you arrived, I already looked into it for you. That family has already been entirely destroyed — their downfall came only a year after your own family’s. The young man you were betrothed to likely died before he even turned five.”

She blinked slowly. “I know.”

Bai Shating looked at her, startled. “Hm?”

“I know… you found this out a long time ago, and never told me. Just as, all these days I’ve spent by your side, I never once asked you about it, did I?”

They meant the same thing, and this time, he understood.

Ye Liuchun took the wooden tag from his hand and, without hesitation, tossed it straight into the Qinhuai River beside them.

Bai Shating started to reach out to stop her, then thought better of it and let his hand fall. “You never… really believed you’d find them, did you.”

Her half-loosened hair had come further undone in the passion of a moment ago, but she paid it no mind, leaning idly against the cabin, answering softly, “Of course. How could I ever pin my hopes on something so insubstantial?”

Bai Shating sighed and pulled her into his arms, saying nothing more, simply sitting quietly with her.

It was Ye Liuchun, instead, who reached for the moon lute nearby and plucked at the strings a couple of times. “Shisan, you’ve never heard me play yet.”

She slipped out of his embrace and sat casually on the edge of the boat, her hair falling loose and disheveled, one shoulder slightly bared — mist clinging to her cloud-like hair, cool moonlight against jade-white arms.

He truly had never, in his life, heard anyone play so beautifully.

Many years later, Bai Shating would still remember exactly how he’d felt in that moment — a tingling, melting sensation. Before he’d met her, his heart had never yet stirred with romantic feeling; he had never known what love between men and women truly felt like.

That was why, later, he would be able to write of every shade of longing and sorrow this world had to offer.

Only, the one thing he never understood — was himself.

The next day, Ye Liuchun moved out of the inn where she’d been staying and into the first private residence Bai Shating had purchased in Jinling.

Later, on a night of heavy drinking on the terrace of the Chunfenghua Establishment, whenever Ye Liuchun looked back on that time, she would always think herself pitifully, laughably foolish.

She had no idea at all what it meant to move into his private residence. Wholeheartedly, she played the part of the lovestruck young girl drowning in romance, while Bai Shating, deep in the passion of the moment, abandoned his usual pastimes of cockfighting and dog-racing to spend every single day glued to her side — arranging flowers, drinking wine, chasing butterflies, painting each other’s eyebrows, just like a real married couple.

They had kissed. Touched each other. Their hair tangled together, utterly, intimately close.

The first time she gave herself to him, she lay with her eyes half-open, looking up at the dim red bed curtains overhead, the auspicious symbols of fertility and abundance woven into the fabric, and for a moment she allowed herself the illusion that she truly might live out an ordinary woman’s life, just like anyone else.

That autumn, Zhou Tan wrote to say he was heading to the capital to seek out relatives and prepare for the imperial examinations, asking whether Bai Shating would like to accompany him.

Under the lamplight, Bai Shating labored over a reply, saying he’d find Zhou Tan for a drink once he reached the capital, but this year, he’d have to pass.

In truth, he wasn’t the aimless, unaccomplished son of a great family he appeared to be — his private residence held a vast library, and he often read alongside her. He simply loved his amusements too much in his youth, unwilling to waste the fleeting spring on anything else.

Ye Liuchun sat beside him, grinding ink, and after much hesitation, finally asked, “Shisan, what are your plans for the future?”

Bai Shating propped his chin on his hand, eyes distant with longing. “To bring peace and prosperity to the world — that ought to be every scholar’s aspiration. But… I also want to become a great poet.”

He chewed on the end of his brush, mumbling vaguely, “When I go to the capital for the examinations, will you come with me? Though it might be complicated. You could also stay here, that’s fine too… Father always says that without an official title, even though our family has generations of noble standing and no shortage of wealth, I still couldn’t marry the kind of well-born lady he wants for me. If you ask me, what’s so good about marrying early anyway? Not that I’m keen on it in the first place.”

At this, he perked up again. “But then, if I marry earlier, I could give you a proper title sooner too. As it stands now, wronging you by keeping you as an outside mistress — I don’t even dare let my father find out… Once I’ve earned my title, I’ll ask him to let you into the household as a concubine. It shouldn’t be too difficult then…”

He paused, noticing that Ye Liuchun’s hand had gone still as she ground the ink, and changed his question. “What’s wrong?”

Ye Liuchun immediately averted her eyes, shaking her head numbly.

Even the most carefully pasted window paper couldn’t withstand a strong enough gust of wind.

She jolted awake, suddenly, from the dream she’d been telling herself for the past six months, feeling a great hollow open up in her chest, the wind howling through it.

After a moment of silence, Bai Shating heard her say something like this.

“Shisan, did you know… I’m a woman of the lowest register. Setting aside the trouble of clearing my status just to take me as a concubine — people would laugh at you for it.”

He let out a breath of relief. “I already knew you were a woman of the pleasure quarters. Xiaobai didn’t say so in his letter, but I could have looked into it myself either way — I don’t mind at all.”

The wind inside her chest gathered snow and frost, hardening into a layer of ice, bone-deep and cold.

Ye Liuchun found she couldn’t manage a smile at all. She repeated, softly, “You already… knew?”

She thought, dazed, that Zhou Tan’s letter hadn’t mentioned it — but he’d seen her documents. By rights, there had never been anything to hide, if he’d simply looked into it.

The first time they’d kissed, she’d wondered, out of “a woman’s proper reserve,” whether she ought to refuse — but in the end, she hadn’t had the heart to.

He had wanted her, offered no promises at all, and after much hesitation, she had given herself to him with both hands, closing her eyes and ears to reason, wholeheartedly dreaming the dream of spending her whole life devoted to one man.

But in his mind, she had simply been someone he could kiss without any promise at all, take liberties with without ever needing a marriage contract.

She had imagined herself a woman of good family. He had simply been her client all along.

The Bai family was the foremost noble house of Jinling, and Bai Shating always said only the finest clothes and jewelry were fit for her, spending freely, filling her chamber with gold and jade.

A moment ago, all of it had been proof of their tender devotion to one another.

A moment later, it had become nothing but payment for services rendered.

Outside mistress. Concubine. Principal wife…

These words spun wildly through her mind.

She could find no fault in any of it — Bai Shating hadn’t done a single thing wrong. Any woman of the lowest register, meeting a man this good, would have devoted herself to him for the rest of her life without complaint.

But — but…

Seeing her expression change, Bai Shating set down his brush and pulled her into his arms with concern. “Liuchun, are you all right?”

Ye Liuchun gazed at his face.

He was forever bright and radiant, his eyes always tender and full of feeling. He never needed to speak — his silent, lingering looks alone could make a lovesick girl blush. He loved to laugh freely and openly, always had sweet words ready to coax a smile, and when he was happy, a flash of sly, satisfied delight would cross his face. He was the brightest young man in all of Jinling, the young master everyone adored.

—Someone like that! Someone exactly like that!

How had she ever dared imagine that a man like him could love, with his whole heart, someone as lowly, as poor, as freely “trifled with” as herself?

She should be grateful for his kindness.

She should understand his way of thinking — it was, after all, the most natural thing in the world. Anyone else in his position would have thought exactly the same.

He had already been more than generous with her.

If she had a shred of conscience left, she shouldn’t, shouldn’t—

But she couldn’t help herself.

Ye Liuchun’s fingers traced along Bai Shating’s brow, and a sudden, trembling malice rose up in her heart. She heard herself say: “Young Master Bai, you knew I was a prostitute — and yet you never told me sooner. If you had, I wouldn’t have had to keep pretending to be a proper lady… Every day, putting on that little act, just to coax a bit more coin out of you for my services — it’s been quite exhausting, really.”

She curled her lips into a smile, mimicking the most familiar expression from her days at Zuihong Tower, sweet and coquettish. “Still, Young Master Bai’s always been so generous — I suppose it was worth the effort…”

She cupped his face and pressed a kiss to his lips.

Bai Shating shoved her away, hard and without mercy.

He stood, staring at her in disbelief, his voice shaking. “What are you saying?”

Ye Liuchun stumbled against the corner of the table, a bruise already blooming dark on her arm. She seemed utterly unaware of the pain, didn’t even try to rise, only her brow twitching faintly as she answered, soft and gentle, “…Young Master Bai, why are you angry?”

Bai Shating swept the jade paperweight off the table with a furious swipe, roaring, “I’m the one who should be asking you what you’re angry about!”

The moment he’d thrown it, he already half regretted it — the white jade paperweight shattered into flying shards, and Ye Liuchun had to raise her sleeve to shield her face.

“Why would I be angry?” Ye Liuchun laughed, utterly indifferent to the shards scattered across her, crawling a few steps toward him and wrapping her arms obediently around his legs. “Young Master Bai, as long as you know — it’s not for nothing, all those days I spent walking on eggshells, terrified you’d find out and think me filthy…”

Bai Shating grabbed the front of her robe and hauled her up off the ground. “Are you saying all this to demean yourself, or to demean me? You clearly know—”

Ye Liuchun thought, dazed — know what?

Know that you love me?

Yes, I know that. But I also know — this love of yours is shallow, careless, worth so very little.

You’ve only just tasted first love, never yet seen the full breadth of what this world holds, its thousand shades of beauty.

This little bit of affection you feel — here today, and tomorrow it’ll wash away with the spring river, gone without a trace.

After all, isn’t that exactly what love is — a mirage, a reflection of the moon on water, as fleeting as morning dew?

Or — know that you’ve already done everything you possibly could?

I know that too. I know I ought to be endlessly grateful, know that in this whole life of mine, I’ll probably never meet a better client than you.

But — but!

Bai Shating, wronged and aggrieved, his eyes red, sniffled and softened his tone, speaking with careful gentleness. “Making you wait for me to pass the examinations — that really has wronged you. But if I don’t do it this way, my father won’t let you into the household at all… I swear, I won’t make you wait too long. You… don’t be afraid.”

Ye Liuchun froze.

So this was it — he thought her self-deprecating words just now had come from her fear that he couldn’t promise her a future.

But what she feared most… wasn’t it precisely the future he’d just sketched out for her?

Ye Liuchun laughed softly. Once she’d laughed herself out, she climbed to her feet, straightened her hair, and tried to imagine she still had a shred of dignity left. “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid… You… go on ahead.”

Bai Shating said, “You’re clearly still angry.”

Ye Liuchun explained, weary and helpless, “I’m not… Even a working girl gets to choose whether to take a client today. Am I really obligated to keep you here?”

Bai Shating jumped up. “I knew you were still angry… You— you— why should I be the one to leave, this is my house!”

“Oh…” Ye Liuchun repeated, hollow and lost. “Right. This is your house. Then I’ll be the one to go.”

As she spoke, without even putting on her outer robe, she turned and headed for the door. Bai Shating grabbed her arm and yanked her back, his voice rough. “Where do you think you’re going, this late at night? Forget it — I’ll be the one to leave… And I’m telling you, I won’t be coming back anymore!”

She kept her head bowed deeply, and Bai Shating couldn’t see her expression, had no idea that his careless, offhand words had just torn her heart to shreds.

He said he wouldn’t come anymore… but then, his coming had always been entirely a matter of whim in the first place. She would grow old one day, while he would remain, for a long while yet, a favored guest chasing after beauty in the flower gardens.

She didn’t even need to open her eyes to see every day that lay ahead of her, clear as day.

Might as well get used to it now.

Bai Shating stormed off, but paused at the doorway as though remembering something, and stomped back, angrily tossing an intricately carved wooden box at her. “I made this myself. I meant it to make you happy. Now, I suppose… throw it away if you want.”

Long after he’d left, Ye Liuchun finally picked up the box and, with trembling hands, opened it.

Inside was a crooked little lovers’ knot, embroidered with an equally crooked character — “Bai.”

She pressed the knot to her chest, mouth open, wanting to sob aloud, but no sound came out — only hot, urgent tears. As a child, she’d once watched through a crack in the door as a client beat her mother; her mother had seen her and signaled for silence, and she’d clamped her own mouth shut with both hands, tears soaking into her palms.

She shouldn’t cry. It was far too pathetic.

Everything the girls at Zuihong Tower envied, longed for — she had all of it. What more could she possibly want?

Ye Liuchun drifted through the next three or four days in a daze, and only belatedly realized, after that time had passed, that Bai Shating truly hadn’t come.

He had never before gone more than three days without seeing her.

She dressed and rushed to the door, ready to step outside, then drew her foot back. She caught the sweeping servant woman and asked where he’d gone, but the woman brushed off her hand with contemptuous disdain, saying she didn’t know.

She asked a young maid by the gate as well. On the surface, the girl was respectful, but her eyes gleamed with barely concealed schadenfreude and disdain. “How would this servant know where the young master’s gone… If the young lady wants to find him, why not simply go to the Bai family residence?”

Living in his private residence, lost in the dream she’d woven for herself, she had never bothered to court favor with these people.

Now, in their eyes, she finally saw clearly what she truly was.

If he didn’t come, she didn’t dare set foot outside the residence; if he didn’t come, she couldn’t go looking for him at his family home.

The maids still called her “young lady,” but they all knew exactly what she really was — the only one who hadn’t known was herself.

Ye Liuchun stood in the courtyard, turning to look back at the deep, sprawling residence.

Beneath the high autumn sun, she realized with sudden calm — if she stayed, this would be her entire life.

Ye Liuchun gave a sudden shiver. She strode quickly into the study and dug through the very bottom of her trunks until she found her registration papers and documents, along with the travel permits Zhou Tan had once arranged for her, for both the capital and Jinling.

She packed the simplest possible bundle. Of everything he’d given her these past six months, she took nothing at all.

In the end, she couldn’t bear to leave it behind entirely, and tied that lovers’ knot to the bottom of her moon lute.

Once she’d finished packing, she suddenly found herself unwilling to leave after all. Footsteps sounded in the courtyard, and she rushed to the window, only to find it was merely the steward, returning from an errand.

For the next two days, she hovered anxiously by the window, hoping he would come, and hoping he wouldn’t.

She even managed to convince herself that if he did come, perhaps she could bear an endless, unbounded future after all — she could be a concubine, live out of sight, share his love with others, and when everything had finally worn away, she would end her own life quietly, never letting him see what she looked like once her youth had faded.

She was willing to die in that gray, hopeless waiting, if it meant she could have even a single morning, a single evening, by his side.

Three more days passed, and then three more. He never came.

On the morning of the sixth day, her heart gone cold as ash, Ye Liuchun found a young servant boy, pressed a tael of silver into his hand, and had him carry her meager luggage out of the residence, then hire a carriage to take her to the docks.

Then she took off the layered pomegranate-red skirts she’d been wearing, and changed back into the plain, dust-gray robe she’d arrived in.

Under the pretext of taking a walk, Ye Liuchun strolled unhurriedly out of the residence.

Quiet and unassuming — she had come with nothing, and she left with nothing.

Only as she boarded the ship did she suddenly find herself longing for Lin’an.

Perhaps, someday, she would go back there after all.

But she would surely never come to this city of Jinling again.

——————

Author’s Note:

Notes:

1. “Spring River, Flowers, and Moonlit Night” — no annotation needed.
2. “Mist clings to her cloud-like hair, cool moonlight against jade-white arms.” — Du Fu, “Moonlit Night”