In the quiet, humble room, Shen Zhuxi sat on the bed with her knees drawn to her chest, silently letting her tears fall.

Waves of panic and shame crashed over her, and within the turbulent swirl of emotions was a sorrowfulness that ached from the inside out. She grieved for herself, and she grieved for Li Wu. She felt lost, blamed herself, felt regret, felt shame, and did not know what to do with any of it.

It was the first time since leaving the imperial palace that she truly understood — without the Emperor Father, without her Imperial Mother, without Fu Xuanmiao to shelter her, she was nothing.

What good was it that she could write? What did it matter that she knew several styles of calligraphy? The world outside would not accept her. She did not belong here.

If the Emperor Father could see her now, would his heart soften even a little? If her Imperial Mother knew what she had come to, would she regret ending her own life? Why could they not spare even the smallest glance for her — to watch over her, to teach her, to spare her from walking this long and winding road all alone?

Everyone had people and matters more important than her. She wanted to live — she wanted to try so hard to live. This life of hers had been bought with Yu Sha’s, and yet she seemed incapable of doing anything right. Outside the palace walls, she had turned into a complete fool. She could not read circumstances, nor could she read people. Li Wu had saved her, and yet she had regarded him with prejudice all along, never once truly thanking him.

Even if he was a bully, he was a bully who had treated her well. She had vented her anger on him and driven him away, yet he had turned around and helped her — and at the last moment of that wager, he had changed its outcome.

He had cheated, yes — but only to hand her the victory.

The more she thought about it, the more shame burned through her. How could she have driven him away like that? In front of everyone, no less, without leaving him even a shred of dignity, using him as an outlet for her frustration.

Had she always been this awful a person?

If Li Wu came back, how was she to face him? Shen Zhuxi could not bear to keep staying here without shame, yet if she left, she truly had nowhere else to go.

The world was vast, and the Crown Prince had vanished without a trace. Where could a helpless, weaponless young woman like her possibly go?

Speak of the devil and the devil appears — soft footsteps sounded outside the bamboo curtain, and then the curtain shifted—

“Don’t come in!” Shen Zhuxi cried out urgently.

The large hand that had just begun to appear withdrew. Shen Zhuxi wiped at her tears fiercely, inwardly furious at herself — why could she not even control her own eyes?

After a moment, Li Wu’s voice came from outside: “What do you want to eat tonight?”

“I’m not eating,” Shen Zhuxi said coldly, though she did not mean it.

She was afraid to face Li Wu, afraid to confront her own shame directly — and yet the more she avoided it, the more unbearable that shame became.

The pair of feet beneath the curtain shifted, and Li Wu turned and walked out through the entrance.

Perhaps he was tired of it. Tired of her. Perhaps he had finally lost patience and left.

He had done nothing wrong, and in this moment Shen Zhuxi despised herself as well: why was she so useless?

She sat hugging her knees on the cold bed, crying, and resolved that she would leave first thing in the morning. She would leave the earrings behind as an apology. She still had a jade hairpin on her — not as valuable as the earrings, but it might fetch some money. Her ink-stone, brushes, paper, and ink slab were still at the wonton stall; she could only hope the owner had kept them safe. Right now, apart from the jade hairpin and her set of writing instruments, she had nothing left…

Stop crying. What good does crying do?

Shen Zhuxi repeated the words over and over in her mind, yet the tears would not stop. She hated the tears. She hated herself. If she could not even stop crying, what could she possibly do?

While she was lost in self-pity, footsteps sounded again in the main hall. Before Shen Zhuxi could react, the bamboo curtain moved, and Li Wu walked into the inner room.

The moment he stepped in, she buried her head at once, hiding her tear-soaked face and swollen eyes between her knees. She cried out in a panic, “I said don’t come in!”

The wooden bed creaked as Li Wu sat down at the foot of it. A waft of warmth carrying the fragrance of scallions drifted through the air, stirring a craving in Shen Zhuxi’s stomach.

Grumble…

A long, drawn-out rumble emerged from her completely empty belly. Shen Zhuxi was so mortified she wished she could find a hole in the ground and crawl into it.

“Come eat your noodles,” Li Wu said.

“I’m not eating.” Shen Zhuxi held her ground and said stiffly, “Go out. I want to be by myself.”

Silence fell on the other side for a long while. Shen Zhuxi anxiously tracked every sound from beyond, until Li Wu spoke again.

“Are you angry at me?”

Shen Zhuxi bit her lip. The shame that had just begun to settle surged back up again.

“Stop crying. Haven’t you been crying long enough? You’re tired, aren’t you? The noodles are right in front of you. If you don’t eat them and waste this bowl, you’ll owe me another bowl.”

Shen Zhuxi refused to speak, but inside she was already softening. After a long moment, her lips began to move — she was just gathering the courage to say something — when she heard Li Wu say, “All right, that’s enough. I’ve never coddled a woman like this before.”

The abrupt shift caught her completely off guard. Shen Zhuxi suddenly lifted her head and looked directly into Li Wu’s eyes, and the tears streamed right down again.

The frown that had just begun to form on Li Wu’s brow instantly eased. A flicker of alarm flashed through his dark, bright eyes.

“I didn’t mean — ugh, stop crying!”

Before, it had been Shen Zhuxi who could not bring herself to look at Li Wu. Now it was the other way around. He avoided her tearful gaze, his eyes darting around the room.

“I’m just a rough sort of man, no good with words. If you’re really angry, why not hit me a few times, hm?” Li Wu said. “Just tell me straight — what will it take for you to stop crying?”

“Whether I cry or not is none of your concern…” Shen Zhuxi said between sobs.

Li Wu said, “I just think it’s a shame those tears aren’t falling into the water vat.”

Even with tears still streaming down her face, Shen Zhuxi let out an involuntary laugh.

“You’re talking nonsense!”

“I mean it,” Li Wu said. “You used up an entire vat of my water last night, and I had to go borrow water from the neighbors just to boil noodles — how are you going to make that up to me?”

“I’ll forfeit the money from pawning the earrings.”

“That won’t do. Those are two separate matters.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Eat the noodles.” Li Wu held out the bowl and chopsticks he had been holding in his right hand all along. Shen Zhuxi’s eyes landed on the noodles piled in the large bowl, and her throat betrayed her with an involuntary swallow.

When Li Wu pressed the bowl a little closer, she accepted it with only token resistance.

“I can’t finish this much,” she said, the last traces of a tearful tremor still in her voice.

“Whatever you can’t finish is mine.”

Shen Zhuxi saw nothing wrong with that. Back in the palace, uneaten food was always gifted to the attendants closest to her.

“Where should I eat?” she asked.

“You can eat out in the main hall, or you can eat here. Either way,” Li Wu said.

“How would I eat here?”

“Have you never eaten anything on a bed before?”

Shen Zhuxi was startled. She stared at him blankly. “How does one eat on a bed?”

Li Wu moved to the head of the bed and gave her a gentle nudge to scoot her inward. The moment she shifted to the inner side, Li Wu settled onto the bed beside her.

“You—” Shen Zhuxi’s face flooded with heat.

Li Wu said, “I can’t stand perching on a stool like a statue of some deity. Life is short — shouldn’t you do whatever is most comfortable?”

Shen Zhuxi sat holding the bowl of noodles in both hands, her heart still weighted with guilt toward Li Wu. She could not bring herself to chase him off, nor could she make herself comfortable with him staying — and while she wavered back and forth, she had already missed the best moment to object.

Li Wu said, “Bend your knees, set the bowl on top of them, steady it a little with your left hand, and then your right hand is free to hold the chopsticks.”

Shen Zhuxi followed his instructions, but every movement was tentative and uncertain.

“What if… what if the broth spills…”

“Then it spills. It’s not as if I only have the one set of bedding.” He spoke as though he were a man of great wealth, when it was really just a single bed sheet. “It’s less likely to spill than not — what are you afraid of?”

Yes — what was she afraid of?

Eating on a bed, shoulder to shoulder with a man outside her family — this was improper. But so what?

There was no Emperor Father here, no Imperial Mother, no Fu Xuanmiao. There was only her and Li Wu, and a bowl of thin noodles topped with scallions. She did not need to watch anyone else’s expression. Whether she did something or not was entirely up to her own wishes.

The moment they had cast her aside and stopped caring, they should have known — she would gradually drift further and further from the person they had hoped she would become.

Shen Zhuxi had never imagined that the first act of defiance in her life would be eating a bowl of noodles on a bed.

Carefully, she picked up a pair of chopsticks-worth of noodles. To keep the broth from splashing, she held the chopsticks close to the rim of the bowl and slowly drew the noodles into her mouth.

“How are they?” Li Wu asked, once she had finished the first mouthful.

“…They’re good,” Shen Zhuxi said. “Better than any noodles I’ve ever eaten before.”

Li Wu said smugly, “Didn’t I tell you so?”

Shen Zhuxi looked up at him with a small smile, her eyes still shimmering with the remnants of tears. “You did.”

She lowered her head and continued eating, not noticing that Li Wu had suddenly gone quiet, or the steady, fixed way he was watching her.

By the time a third of the bowl was gone, Shen Zhuxi was full. She passed the bowl to Li Wu beside her — and he promptly ate the rest, using the very chopsticks she had been using.

Only then did Shen Zhuxi feel that something was not quite right. The palace attendants did eat the food she left behind, but they certainly did not use her chopsticks!

She watched Li Wu, wanting to say something but holding back.

Perhaps among common folk, people did not mind such things?

In any case, it was already done. Pointing it out now would only make things awkward. Shen Zhuxi talked herself into looking away, listening instead to the slurping sounds of him eating beside her.

Crude sounds, with no connection whatsoever to elegance — and yet, inexplicably, they settled something in Shen Zhuxi and made her feel at ease.

“Li Wu—” she said.

“Hm?” He did not look up.

She kept her head bowed and did her best to put on a calm expression. “About the misunderstanding earlier… I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

A moment passed, and then Li Wu’s voice came again.

“You really are a fool,” he said. “I never blamed you to begin with.”

All of it — the heaviness, the self-loathing, the despair — slipped quietly from her body in that moment. She had never felt so light.

“…Thank you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Mm.”

The sound of noodles being eaten started up again.

Inelegant — but more real and warm than anything elegant had ever been.