“How do you know it’s me and not another girl? She called you ‘Brother Shen,'” Zhu Yan teased, her eyes twinkling with mischief.
Shen Du raised an eyebrow, clearly pleased by Zhu Yan’s hint of jealousy. He gently poked her dark hair with his chin and said with a smile, “I gave the copper whistle to you, not her. You should know where my heart lay at that time.”
Feeling suddenly uninterested, Zhu Yan asked, “What about later?”
“Later, you came to look for me in the Yeting,” Shen Du’s expression gradually darkened as he mentioned this. “But I didn’t know you were the girl who had been kidnapped by traffickers years ago.”
“You came to see me whenever you could. You should know that once someone enters the Yeting, they become a criminal slave. Who would want to associate with a criminal?” Shen Du’s eyes narrowed, pain seeping into his gaze. During that period, if it weren’t for this woman’s companionship and encouragement, he would have given up. As the last of the Shen family, forever branded a criminal slave, what meaning was there in living?
“I was a convicted criminal slave. With you seeking me out and keeping me company, even if I had a heart of stone, how could I not develop some feelings? But it was just a small spark of emotion. Yet, even that tiny spark brought me joy and made my time in the Yeting less bitter.”
Tears fell from Zhu Yan’s eyes as she finally understood why Shen Du had always been so cold towards her.
“There was a period when you didn’t come for a long time. I thought you had married,” Shen Du looked down at her, feeling as if he was embracing the warm sun of autumn. Realizing the chill in the air, he held Zhu Yan tighter.
“But then you came back. You told me you wanted to rescue me. I knew it was impossible, but I was still happy to hear it. How wonderful it was to know that someone in this vast world cared for me.”
“But after you left, there was no news. You never appeared again. I thought it was just a passing whim, a moment of impulsive speech.”
“You were just an ordinary girl, bound to marry someday. Even when you came to the Yeting, you had to crawl through a dog hole, always fearful of being discovered. How could someone like that possibly have the ability to rescue me? Thinking this way, I couldn’t blame you.”
Zhu Yan had long since collapsed crying in Shen Du’s arms, unable to control her sobs.
Shen Du patted her gently, feeling somewhat guilty and unwilling to say more. Zhu Yan finally raised her head, covering her face and speaking indistinctly, “I was learning to be a coroner with my master and preparing for exams. I had no time to find you. Moreover, the guards at the Yeting became stricter, and as I grew taller, I couldn’t fit through the dog hole anymore.”
Zhu Yan cried her face a picture of tear-stained beauty, with crystal droplets clinging to her lashes and her small mouth pouting in distress.
Shen Du sighed helplessly, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
So when Zhang Xingwei later sought an imperial decree to arrange a marriage between Shen Du and the third daughter of the Zhu family, he had murderous thoughts. When it was changed to the sixth daughter, he still didn’t know that the renowned Zhu Sixth Miss in the neighborhood was the person he had been looking for.
“I didn’t even know your name.”
He knew there could be no future, so he never asked, leading to those misunderstandings.
“So you threw a severed head into my bridal sedan to intimidate me and make me leave?” Zhu Yan couldn’t help but laugh at the memory. “Actually, you’re very kind. You knew that whichever girl married you would likely be a pawn, so you deliberately did this on our wedding day to make the girl and her family withdraw from the marriage, avoiding involvement in trouble and losing their lives.”
Shen Du frowned, “But you didn’t withdraw.”
“I wanted to, but I also wanted to keep my head on my shoulders,” Zhu Yan placed her hand on her neck, somewhat amused. “What scared me at that time wasn’t the severed head, but your ‘three delusions.’ I felt my life was over.”
Shen Du narrowed his eyes and gently stroked Zhu Yan’s back. “When you lifted your veil, I recognized you as the girl who came to the Yeting. But how could you be Zhu’s Sixth Miss? It’s also strange that your third sister eloped at the last minute, and Jing Lin couldn’t find your information, only telling me that the Zhu family had two more sisters besides the third daughter.”
Even if they had investigated, they wouldn’t have found out about Zhu Yan’s visits to the Yeting, so the result would have been the same.
“At that time, I decided to scare you away because I knew you were married off as a pawn. Once you were no longer useful, it would be a dead end. I was afraid I couldn’t protect you completely, but you didn’t understand my good intentions. Even the ‘three delusions’ couldn’t scare you away.”
Come to think of it, if Zhu Yan had been scared into withdrawing from the marriage at that time, it could have been explained away. But Zhu Yan wasn’t frightened; she endured the bloodshed and became Madam Shen.
“The way you say it, are you blaming me?” Zhu Yan asked.
Shen Du naturally didn’t dare to blame her, so he changed the subject: “Come to think of it, if it weren’t for Noble Consort Xu, I’d probably still be in the Yeting now.”
Zhu Yan shook her head, “No, that wouldn’t have happened. I would have rescued you.”
Shen Du smiled, “If I had waited for you to rescue me, wouldn’t I have had to wait until my hair turned white? How could I have married you then?”
Well…
Zhu Yan’s cheeks turned pink as she mumbled, “Then we could have become a white-haired couple.”
This woman was truly adorable.
“But I don’t want that. I don’t want to wait until we’re old to be with you. Now I only regret not finding you earlier so we could have been together sooner.”
When such a serious person speaks words of love, it’s particularly blush-inducing. Zhu Yan pushed him away, but Shen Du caught her hand and kissed it.
“When I saw how brilliantly you performed in the cases, I suspected that your method of rescuing me was this – to clear my name.”
But Zhu Yan had no idea about the intricacies of the court. The annihilation of the Shen family was deeply entangled in politics. How could overturning the case be so simple?
“Although I knew that overturning the case would be as difficult as ascending to heaven, I still wanted to try.”
Shen Du gripped Zhu Yan’s hand tightly. “I knew your intentions, which made me want to push you away even more. Even if it meant never acknowledging you for a lifetime, even if you hated me forever, it would be better than watching you get caught in the whirlpool and die an early death.”
Zhu Yan burst out laughing and deliberately said, “You’re dreaming. I just wanted to solve cases because I like solving cases. It wasn’t for you.”
“It’s all the same!” Shen Du didn’t mind at all. What worried him now wasn’t this. “But in the end, you still got involved. It was my carelessness. I thought I was strong enough to protect you. I was greedy.”
Zhu Yan cupped his face, “Now that you know your greed caused trouble, you should make amends properly.”
“Alright, how do you want me to make amends?” Shen Du raised an eyebrow, his eyes filled with amusement.
Zhu Yan suddenly felt depressed. She glared at him and took out the copper whistle to examine it closely. “When did you realize I was the girl who had been kidnapped by traffickers?” she asked, puzzled.
Shen Du chuckled, not hiding his mockery, “So you know you were stupid enough to get kidnapped?”
Zhu Yan felt embarrassed and angry, ignoring him.
Shen Du didn’t dare say more and obediently answered, “I recognized you when you took out the copper whistle.”
Zhu Yan thought for a moment and realized something shocking: “On our wedding day, you recognized me as the girl from the Yeting but didn’t acknowledge it. Then when you saw the copper whistle, you recognized me as the kidnapped girl, and you still didn’t acknowledge it.”
Zhu Yan felt somewhat dejected.
She rubbed the copper whistle in her palm, thinking, “You’re something else, Shen Du.”
Thinking this, she jabbed the whistle hard to vent her frustration.
Fearing she might hurt her hand, Shen Du snatched the whistle away and put it out of her reach. He caught her hand and held it before his eyes, his gaze filled with a puppy-like grievance:
“You didn’t have any feelings for me. What use would it have been to tell you?”