Fu Miaoxue froze.

It was only a brief instant—but Du Lai caught the flash of alarm in her eyes.

“You really can contact him?!” The rage that welled up from somewhere deep in Du Lai’s chest was immense. His grip on her arm tightened without thinking, nearly crushing it.

“You’re hurting me!” Fu Miaoxue shrieked, wrenching herself free. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t even have a phone—how would I contact anyone?! What’s wrong with you?!”

By this point Du Lai had already convinced himself she was hiding a way to reach the outside world. No matter what she said, he couldn’t believe her.

“I really have gone crazy!” he shouted. “This island drove me crazy! You drove me crazy! I must be out of my mind to be stuck on this wretched island living like a savage with you!!!”

Fu Miaoxue’s eyes went red immediately, but she didn’t cry.

She bit her lip and fought back stubbornly. “I said there’s nothing. There’s nothing!”

Du Lai stared at her, his chest heaving, and slowly nodded. “Fine…fine. You say there’s nothing, so there’s nothing…”

He picked up a large rock from the ground and hurled it at the bamboo hut. A loud thud, and a chunk of the mud-plastered wall crumbled away.

“Nothing, right?” Still not enough. He grabbed a thick stick and started swinging it at the walls and roof, smashing. “Nothing! Nothing!”

Fu Miaoxue couldn’t hold it back anymore. She burst into tears. “What are you doing?! What do you want?!”

Du Lai didn’t hear her. He couldn’t control the emotions inside him—he felt a flame scorching his lungs, his gut, his chest. If he didn’t let it out, it would kill him. Suffocate him. Drive him mad.

Yes.

He was going mad.

Fu Miaoxue was going to drive him mad!

How could she know of a way to contact the outside world and still live on this island like nothing was wrong?! Fine—she’d escaped that suffocating cage. She was free. She’d been willing to give up every luxury of being a pampered young mistress for that freedom. But what about him? Why should he sacrifice his life along with her?!

Du Lai’s fury was beyond control. Bamboo tubes were knocked over. The roof was battered. Absurdly, no matter how hard he hit or struck those walls—they didn’t even shudder. He’d spent day after day reinforcing them to survive on this island. And now the very shelter he’d built had given Fu Miaoxue the comfort to deceive him.

If they were starving and exposed, would she still keep silent? Would she still say nothing?!

All the blood in his body roared to his head. He raged at her, and raged at himself.

Fu Miaoxue couldn’t pull him back. She cried and screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! You bastard! Du Lai, you bastard!!”

Du Lai, wild with rage and wanting to destroy everything around him, couldn’t damage the hut, so he turned on the outdoor stove. That stove was also his creation—built from wet clay packed into an inverted bowl shape, with a hole at the top where the burning charcoal sat.

Fire was the foundation of all survival out here. Without fire, they couldn’t boil water, cook food, or stay warm and dry.

Du Lai set his jaw, grabbed two bamboo tubes that still held water, and upended them directly over the stove. The burning charcoal hissed and choked, a plume of smoke rising.

Fu Miaoxue was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe. Everyone around her had always deferred to her—she had never in her life been treated like this.

“You’ve lost your mind, you’ve lost your mind… you’re crazy…” Fu Miaoxue wept, murmuring over and over.

Du Lai’s violence ran its course. The feeling of helplessness slowly flooded in to replace it, and he collapsed onto the ground, staring blankly at the wreckage around him.

He felt he’d been wrong.

He also felt he hadn’t been wrong.

Without forcing her once, was he really supposed to stay here guarding this place forever?

He lay down. Sunlight poured through the holes he’d battered in the roof and stung his eyes. Fu Miaoxue’s cursing and crying and hiccupping still reached his ears.

Du Lai closed his eyes.

*Fine then.*

*Live or die. Fine.*

—