Du Lai hadn’t thought of what to say.

Fu Miaoxue helpfully supplied a reason for him herself, smiling. “Are you going to fix my shoes? Du Lai, you’re amazing—you can even fix shoes~”

Du Lai: “……”

He pressed his lips together and said, “Right, I’ll see if I can reattach the lace.”

Fu Miaoxue said brightly, “Then I’ll go wash your clothes! I can’t always let you do everything yourself!”

And with that, she scooped up the clothes Du Lai had piled in the corner, looking full of energy, and went out.

Du Lai watched her go, momentarily speechless.

Her unguarded attitude made the doubts in his mind rise again. Was she that good an actress, or had he simply been wrong? Because how could she let him fix her shoe without a second thought?

His gaze fell again on the little leather shoe with its broken lace.

A tracker could only be one of two kinds. The first kind powered on and continuously broadcast a signal, so whoever was receiving it could locate her at any time. The second kind required a trigger switch before it would send any signal out.

Assuming Fu Miaoxue did have a tracker on her, and Fu Lisheng still couldn’t find her—the switch must not have been triggered. Could the shoe sole contain a mechanism? …Or maybe it wasn’t in the shoe at all? But then where?

The more he thought, the more tangled it became, like a knot tightening in his chest.

The thin wire he’d used to pick the lock now had a new purpose—sharpened fine enough to serve as a needle. He threaded it with plant-fiber cord, pushed it through the leather, twisted, pulled through from the other side, repeated the stitch several times. The stitching was large and ugly, but it held one side of the lace firmly in place.

When he finished, Du Lai felt oddly lost.

Shouldn’t he be going to confront Fu Miaoxue? Why was he in here, sewing her shoe?

From outside came Fu Miaoxue’s singing again.

Every day she was as bright as a little bird—humming, trilling little tunes, a voice that curled and wound around itself. He couldn’t make out what the song meant…

She was nothing like him. She never fell into the bewilderment, helplessness, worry, or despair of being trapped here. None of those emotions touched her. She was always that happy—and even when she got angry with him on occasion, she was vibrantly, energetically furious.

Why?

If she didn’t have some inner certainty to rely on, what gave her the right to be that cheerful?

Du Lai’s mood grew restless. He couldn’t stop himself from standing and going outside. He looked around and didn’t see her, then followed the sound of her voice—it was clearly coming from above.

She had climbed to the top of the rocks again.

Du Lai suppressed his irritation and said, as calmly as he could manage, “Why are you up that high again? I told you—you can dry clothes down below too.”

Fu Miaoxue was spreading the freshly washed clothes flat across the large rock, cheerful. “It’s nice up here~”

She glanced at him, assumed he was worried about her safety, and added, “Don’t worry, I won’t fall~ I’ve been climbing since I was little. I’ve had plenty of practice!”

Du Lai’s expression was blank. “Even if you climb higher, you won’t be free.”

Fu Miaoxue paused, looked down at him from above with a puzzled frown. “What’s wrong with you? You’re being strange.”

“Nothing. Just a passing thought,” Du Lai said. “Climbing high won’t make you free. Even becoming a bird wouldn’t give you freedom. The seabirds out there—once they fly too far from this island, they exhaust themselves and fall into the sea and die. They can never truly be free.”

Fu Miaoxue’s expression shifted and changed.

She wasn’t stupid. She could hear the sarcasm in Du Lai’s voice. She felt her temper rise—but then, apparently thinking better of it, she slowly drew a breath and replied stiffly, “Fine. I’m not angry… You helped me fix my shoes today, so I won’t fight with you. I’ll just consider this one of your weird episodes.”

Fu Miaoxue finished laying the laundry out and climbed down from the top of the rocks, heading straight back into the bamboo hut.

Du Lai caught her by the arm.

Fu Miaoxue spun around at once, livid. “Hey! I already said I wouldn’t fight with you! Don’t push your luck!”

Du Lai had given up on subtlety. He was done testing her. “You actually have a way to contact your grandfather, don’t you?”

—