By the time they got Yu Min’s message, the moon had only just risen. By the time Qiao Qi and Liang Yan were standing at the hospital entrance, the moon was already nowhere to be seen.

…Which tells you just how bad these two were at procrastinating.

Qiao Qi’s down jacket was so long she fumbled a bit getting out of the car.

She only fumbled for that one second, and in that time she saw Liang Yan get out crisply, circle around the front of the car to her side, open the door, and bend slightly, his arm sliding practiced and smooth beneath the crook of her knees.

Qiao Qi startled, let out an “Ew?” and shrank away to the side.

The moment she pulled back, Liang Yan’s face fell instantly.

He looked up, clearly displeased, his voice rough. “What are you dodging for?”

Alright then.

Very intimidating.

So Qiao Qi wisely read the room and raised her arms to loop around his neck on her own. “Not dodging.”

Only then did Young Master Liang let out a soft huff, lifting her out of the car and setting her down steadily on the ground.

Whether it was this display satisfying some particular streak of alpha-male possessiveness in him, he smoothed down her hair while also pulling her hood back over her head.

His voice carried a faint hint of pride. “Moved?”

Qiao Qi went “Hm?” not quite understanding what there was to be moved about.

Liang Yan clicked his tongue. “Dating me means you don’t even have to walk.”

Qiao Qi: “…Woman, you’re not allowed to walk? Only allowed to be carried by me?”

Liang Yan’s mouth twitched, and, clearly exasperated, he gave her hood a hard tug.

The move caught her off guard; Qiao Qi stumbled a step and, with an “Ouch,” fell straight into his chest.

Liang Yan was quite satisfied with this instinctive reaction — but the next second he froze.

— Because Qiao Qi gently wrapped her arms around him and patted his back like soothing a pet, saying softly, “Don’t worry.”

Liang Yan had thought he’d hidden his emotions well; in reality, every gesture, every glance, every word had given him away completely.

Complicated feelings twisting inside him, he tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Woman, you’re a bit too smart for your own good.”

Qiao Qi smiled. “Doesn’t that just prove you have good taste?”

Just then a night breeze passed by, and Liang Yan tilted his head up slightly, glancing at the sky.

The wind scattered the clouds, and the bright, pale shadow of the moon slowly emerged.

This was the kind of light that could still exist, even at night.

The heart that had been beating uneasily inside Liang Yan’s chest suddenly settled. He thought of himself all night, always finding some way to avoid the moment, and couldn’t help but find it a little ridiculous.

What was going on.

Since when was he less capable of shouldering things than a woman?

“Qiao Qi, you can’t leave me.”

Liang Yan was like some beast finally willing to lower its head, lying vulnerable on the ground, exposing the most defenseless part of himself, his belly.

He said to her, “You can’t just love me and leave.”

Qiao Qi said, “I won’t.”

If Liang Xumo really had done something, she wouldn’t take it out on Liang Yan.

But she would need the Liang family to give her an explanation.

Still, in this moment, Qiao Qi didn’t say any of that out loud.

Under the clear, bright moon, the two of them tried to gather up whatever last bit of tenderness they could draw from each other.

—

This was Qiao Qi’s first time visiting the hospital’s psychiatric ward. Whether it was the atmosphere or simply the lateness of the hour, from the moment the elevator doors opened, Qiao Qi felt an eerie chill wash over her.

The hallway lighting was dim, though presumably for the sake of the night-shift staff, there was an emergency light lit between every two rooms.

But the light wasn’t bright, which only made the atmosphere feel stranger still.

A breeze blew through from somewhere unknown, and Qiao Qi found herself instinctively leaning closer to Liang Yan.

Liang Yan understood at once and took hold of her hand.

Just at that moment, a series of dull sounds suddenly rang out from some unknown direction: “Thud— thud— thud—”

Qiao Qi’s body visibly tensed, her grip tightening on Liang Yan’s hand.

In this relationship of theirs, Liang Yan always seemed to lack security, as if he couldn’t handle pressure — but in truth, when real outside pressure hit, he was fully capable of shielding Qiao Qi carefully.

Like right now — sensing her unease, he immediately reached out and pulled her half into his arms.

Still afraid, Qiao Qi asked quietly, “Do you know where Auntie Yu’s office is?”

“She’s a specially appointed consultant here, she doesn’t have a dedicated office yet,” Liang Yan said. “She doesn’t need to keep regular hours.”

“Oh.” Out of fear, Qiao Qi even responded aloud to something that needed no response at all.

Seeing how genuinely frightened she was, Liang Yan said, “I’ll text her, ask her to come out and meet—”

Before he could finish, footsteps — uneven, hurried — suddenly sounded from behind them.

Liang Yan turned and saw four or five people in medical scrubs walking briskly toward them, Yu Min leading the way.

Yu Min usually looked gentle, but in her work scrubs she carried a much sterner air. Seeing Qiao Qi and Liang Yan, she showed no surprise whatsoever.

Passing by the two of them, she dropped a hurried line: “Liang—”

She glanced at Qiao Qi and switched her phrasing. “Cai Hong is missing.”

Liang Yan’s brow furrowed. “Missing? What do you mean?”

How could a person just go missing in a hospital full of staff and security cameras?

“I was watching her while I texted you. I was worried you two would be too scared to come up, so I went to wait by the elevator for a bit,” Yu Min said, giving Liang Yan and Qiao Qi a faintly displeased look, clearly blaming them for being too slow. “It only took a moment and she was gone. She went through a camera blind spot.”

Qiao Qi looked lost. “So what do we do?”

Liang Yan, oddly, wasn’t panicking. “She can’t have left this floor.”

Just then, a young nurse came rushing over, out of breath. “Director Yu, the emergency door to the rooftop is somehow open.”

At those words, every face present changed.

Even Qiao Qi went pale instantly, gripping Liang Yan’s hand tight.

Her mind spiraled into total chaos.

“Could it be that…” the nurse trailed off, but the rest of the sentence was clear enough without saying it.

Qiao Qi felt her legs go weak for no reason, but the next second, she heard Yu Min say clearly: “No.”

Qiao Qi turned sharply to look at her.

As if sensing exactly what was on her mind, Yu Min shot her a reassuring look. “She wouldn’t dare.”

With that, she turned to Liang Yan. “Where do you think she’d go?”

Liang Yan paused for a moment, then said three words.

“The restroom.”

This time it was Qiao Qi’s turn to freeze.

The restroom?

Why the restroom?

They all knew what that restroom meant.

Because Maiya had…

Qiao Qi’s mind went blank for a beat, and before she’d fully processed it, Liang Yan was already pulling her along, following the group toward the restroom.

They hadn’t even fully reached the restroom before Yu Min declared with certainty: “This is it.”

Her gaze was fixed on a spot on the floor; following her line of sight, everyone saw a footprint pressed into something outside the restroom door.

As long as they found her, that was what mattered.

Otherwise there was no telling how much liability the hospital would have to answer for.

Yu Min tucked her hands into her pockets and turned to the other staff. “We’ll take it from here. Too many people will put too much pressure on the patient.”

As a specially appointed director, her word naturally carried weight.

The others filed away one by one, and only then did Yu Min reach out and gently push the door open.

The door swung open only a crack; from Qiao Qi’s angle, she could just make out Liang— no, Cai Hong.

Cai Hong was crouched on the floor, her hair loose and disheveled, half her face visible.

Her face wasn’t particularly clean either, and something — it looked like vegetable juice — stained the collar of her clothes.

Yu Min made no further move, as if this had been her intention all along: to let Qiao Qi and Liang Yan simply look at Cai Hong like this.

But just then, Cai Hong, for some reason, suddenly lifted her head.

Caught off guard, Qiao Qi found herself locking eyes with her directly.

Qiao Qi saw Cai Hong’s pupils shudder visibly, and just as she was momentarily at a loss for what to do, Yu Min abruptly pulled Liang Yan forward.

Then pushed him inside.

The move was so sudden that Liang Yan hadn’t even had time to brace himself before he found himself standing right in front of Cai Hong.

He looked at this Cai Hong, so far removed from the one in his memory, and for a long while couldn’t say a single word.

As for Cai Hong, she didn’t need him to speak either.

Faced with Liang Yan’s sudden appearance, she didn’t seem especially surprised, only hurriedly raised a finger to her lips. “Shh—”

She pulled him down to crouch beside her, both of them looking toward one particular spot.

Following her gaze, Liang Yan saw only a bucket — one holding a mop, the water inside nearly frozen over from the cold weather.

Without moving, he glanced back through the door at Yu Min, who signaled with a look for him not to act rashly.

Qiao Qi, though, was worried. “Will he be…”

Yu Min cut her off immediately. “If she wanted to do anything to him right now, Liang Yan wouldn’t hold back.”

So there was absolutely no need to worry about her hurting him.

Because there was no chance of that happening at all.

Qiao Qi, thoroughly silenced, said nothing more.

She stood shoulder to shoulder with Yu Min, quietly watching Liang Yan and Cai Hong crouched together in the restroom.

Cai Hong kept staring at that spot, until a single drop of water fell to the floor with a soft “plop,” and only then did she say her second sentence to Liang Yan.

“Quick, look, look over there!” she said, pointing carefully at a spot. “She’s lying right there, do you see her? Shh— she’s about to die, no, wait, she just fell, it’s got nothing to do with me, I was just—”

Her words cut off abruptly.

The next second, Cai Hong suddenly lunged toward that spot.

But there was nothing there at all, so she crashed straight into the bucket instead.

Icy water spilled across the floor, soaking her clothes and hair completely.

Her eyes had turned red at some point; she clutched desperately at the half-frozen mop, as if wanting to hold it to her chest, and yet seemed to be holding back too.

She spoke to the mop: “As long as you don’t tell Qiao Qi and the others, as long as you don’t tell them about the diary… ha! No, wait, I already tore the diary up! Threw it down the drain! No one will believe you! As long as you don’t say it, don’t say that Qiao Qi is the one the Liang family was supposed to adopt, I’ll save you. Okay?”

Her voice suddenly softened. “Okay? Hm? Maiya, is that okay with you?”

At those words, everyone present finally understood what had actually happened that day.

The thing Liang Yan had been dreading all along had, in the end, turned out to be true.

His first instinct was to look up at Qiao Qi standing outside the door, and he tried to get up — but the next second Cai Hong grabbed hold of him, gripping tightly.

At some point she’d dropped the mop; now kneeling on the floor, she gripped Liang Yan’s arm. “She called me a bad woman! Did you hear that! She called me that! It wasn’t that I refused to save her! It’s that she never wanted me to save her! She didn’t need it! She didn’t need it!!”

Liang Yan looked at Cai Hong’s twisted, contorted face and, for some inexplicable reason, caught the scent of something rotten.

He frowned and yanked himself free of her grip.

Cai Hong slammed into the wall beside her, hitting her head against it.

At the same moment, Yu Min pushed the door open.

Slight as Yu Min’s build looked, she was surprisingly strong.

Perhaps from years of handling patients like this, her technique for controlling someone was practiced and precise — within a few moves she had Cai Hong pinned in a corner.

By the time she looked up again, Liang Yan and Qiao Qi were nowhere to be seen.

Yu Min’s brow furrowed deeply, her gaze returning to Cai Hong, who was still muttering under her breath: “Can’t let them know. Can’t let them know. Can’t! Absolutely can’t!”

Yu Min wasn’t Qiao Qi or Liang Yan; she couldn’t feel what they were feeling.

But she had feelings of her own.

The girl she remembered — covered in scars, all those years ago — hadn’t been like this.

Wouldn’t have looked at death with such indifference. Wouldn’t have deceived everyone for the sake of her own selfish gain.

Where, exactly, had it all gone wrong.

Had they simply never seen her clearly?

Or had this person, from the very beginning, always been a fabrication.

“Xiao Mo…” Yu Min called softly.

For just an instant, Cai Hong seemed to come back to herself. She cut off abruptly, looking up at Yu Min, dazed.

As if her memory had scrambled entirely, she looked at Yu Min and suddenly smiled. “Auntie Yu? Auntie Yu, you’re here? Why are you here now? Oh, Liang Yan should be getting out of school soon too, right? I should go make him dinner — his favorite, ribs, he loves those.”

“Mm, Mom and Dad are coming home tonight too. What do they like to eat?”

“Oh, Dad’s cholesterol has been a bit high lately, he shouldn’t eat meat. Mom’s blood sugar’s been dropping too much again, sigh, why does no one take care of their health…”

She rambled on, saying this and that.

Yu Min, struck by a wave of feeling, loosened her grip.

No longer restrained, Cai Hong stumbled up from the floor and started walking out, muttering as she went, “Why was I sitting in the bathroom? Ugh, why am I so dirty! I need to shower first, my mom’s a total neat freak!”

Yu Min spoke up at the right moment. “Xiao Mo?”

Cai Hong turned back with a “Hm?”

Yu Min was, in the end, a doctor. She couldn’t let her personal feelings entirely take over and walk away — she still needed to escort Cai Hong back to her room.

So she gently took Cai Hong’s hand. “I’ll take you to the bathroom.”

Cai Hong tucked a stray strand of messy hair behind her ear and said, “Okay.”

—

The moon overhead had, at some point, been swallowed up by clouds again; the last of the light at the hospital entrance faded, and the night grew even darker.

Qiao Qi sat at the edge of the garden, Liang Yan standing not far off.

But not daring to come any closer.

In truth, neither of them had done anything wrong, and yet somehow, all of a sudden, neither knew what they were supposed to do.

Why was that, exactly.

Inside her sleeve, Qiao Qi’s thumb rubbed, again and again, against the necklace on her wrist.

The necklace pressed into her skin, a little painful.

On a night this cold, her mind — already sharpened clear by the wind — grew even clearer still because of that faint, dull ache.

Qiao Qi suddenly thought of Maiya, that little girl, clamoring to ride on Liang Yan’s motorcycle on the way home.

Back then, had she ever wondered whether, along with this man entering her life, other, less kind people might enter her life too.

Or even — that she might watch, helpless, as death carried her away.

Thinking this, Qiao Qi slowly lifted her head.

She looked at Liang Yan, standing less than two meters away, watching her, not daring to step closer.

But — it truly had nothing to do with him, didn’t it?

The wind blew, and Qiao Qi’s eyes felt dry. She blinked gently and called out softly, “Liang Yan.”

Her voice wasn’t loud, but Liang Yan immediately started toward her.

He didn’t even sit down beside her — instead he crouched right in front of her.

Taking her hand, looking up at her, his voice dry and rough: “I’m right here.”

Suddenly, Qiao Qi found she couldn’t speak at all.

“I’m sorry.” Liang Yan spoke first.

Qiao Qi still said nothing.

Liang Yan smiled bitterly. “Are you going to leave me now?”

Before Qiao Qi could answer, he gently opened her palm and pressed his face into it.

He said, deliberately, “Then what am I supposed to do from now on.”

Right.

What was he supposed to do from now on.

What were the two of them supposed to do from now on.

Qiao Qi’s throat felt as if a stone had lodged itself there.

After a long while, she finally forced the words out, with difficulty. “Liang Yan.”

Liang Yan looked up.

Qiao Qi reached out and touched his face. “I won’t leave you.”

Liang Yan visibly froze.

He was, perhaps, the one who was the most unsettled of the two of them, after all.

Qiao Qi looked at him and said, “Because I know Maiya loved you very much.”

“She would have wanted, more than anything, for me to be with you.”

Just as she, however much she disliked Liang Xumo, would never have minded Qiao Qi being close to Liang Yan.

Children’s sense of right and wrong was always clear-cut, unambiguous.

Qiao Qi might have grown up, but she still knew exactly who was the perpetrator here, and who was the victim.

If she forced all of this blame onto Liang Yan, wouldn’t that make her a perpetrator too?

So she leaned gently down, lowering her head to meet Liang Yan’s eyes.

Her hand was still resting against his face.

Liang Yan raised his own hand and covered hers.

Overhead, the clouds silently parted, and moonlight descended over the world once more.

The little prince had, at last, come to stand beside his seventh princess.