“Madam, your medicine is here.”

A maidservant carried the medicine bowl to the bedside. Fang Shi, her complexion deathly pale, was helped up from the bed by her personal maid Ning Yu.

She opened her hollow, empty eyes and groped for the medicine bowl that the maidservant placed in her hands.

Dark liquid rippled gently in the golden bowl. A delicate floral fragrance drifted up from the medicine, spreading like mist through the serene and quietly furnished room.

Fang Shi drank the entire bowl of medicine, handed the empty bowl back to the maidservant, and said: “…Why is this not the usual bowl?”

Ning Yu straightened the soft pillows on the bed and helped Fang Shi lean gently against them, then smiled and said: “This is the pure gold phoenix bowl bestowed by His Majesty following the Young Master’s triumphant victory. The Young Master shattered the eight hundred thousand rebel troops in this campaign, shaking both court and country. Even the Censorate, which had previously attacked the Master and Young Master most fiercely, no longer dares to speak. We have all had our share of pride and satisfaction!”

“…He is back?” Fang Shi’s brow furrowed slightly.

“The Young Master returned several days ago. This servant was worried Madam might be displeased, so since Madam did not ask, this servant did not dare say anything…” Ning Yu watched Fang Shi’s expression carefully and continued in a tentative manner, “The Young Master was already ill when he returned, and is still unable to leave his bed at present. Out of concern about passing on the illness, the Young Master has not come personally to pay his respects to Madam, but he sends someone every day to inquire about Madam’s condition.”

Ning Yu spoke on slowly, and seeing that Fang Shi made no move to cut her off, she continued:

“This servant has heard… it is because His Majesty grew wary of the Young Master and forced him to sample medicine on his behalf, which is why he is in this state…”

Fang Shi leaned back against the soft pillows and closed her eyes, remaining silent for a long while.

Ning Yu read the situation with care and said no more. She gently tucked in the bedding around Fang Shi’s corners, then tiptoed out of the room and quietly drew the door shut behind her.

The calming decoction took effect. Fang Shi’s consciousness gradually grew hazy as she sank into the nightmares that came to her day after day without end.

In the dream, sheets of rain cascaded down. The smell of blood was close enough to touch.

Someone was calling her name — her maiden name, the one no one remembered any longer.

Yet when she woke, only two lines of tears remained at the corners of her eyes. Even opening her eyes, all that surrounded her was an impenetrable darkness.

Outside the window, the sound of driving rain drummed on without cease, striking the eaves like a chain of bouncing pearls.

Fang Shi sat up from the bed, wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, and without calling for her maidservant, felt for her embroidered shoes with her feet, put them on by touch, and made her way out of the room, steadying herself along the tables and chairs.

The air was cold and damp. A breeze carrying flecks of rain grazed lightly across her face. Birds, beasts, and insects had all fallen silent. The world contained nothing but the endless, unbroken sound of rain.

Fang Shi steadied herself against the wall, hesitated for some time, then made her way to the Rain Cicada Courtyard, separated from her own quarters by just one courtyard.

She had expected someone to appear and stop her at some point, yet all the way until she walked into the main courtyard, not a single person called out to stop her.

The autumn rain tapped upon the eaves. She stood before the threshold for a long while, then finally lifted her foot and stepped inside.

Fang Shi felt her way to the bedside. Upon touching the warmth of someone beneath the covers, she felt her way gradually upward.

A face of sharp, distinct features took shape in her mind beneath her touch.

In her dreams, he was still a clean-featured young man. When had he grown this thin, this much like a stranger?

How many years had passed since that one night?

A crystalline shimmer wavered in her sightless eyes. A leaden, suffocating grief pressed down upon Fang Shi’s heart, making her lashes tremble. A single scalding tear rolled from her eye and fell into the corner of Fu Xuanmiao’s eye as he opened it.

He looked at her, then suddenly took her hand.

“Mother,” he said softly.

Fang Shi seemed to wake from a dream. As though she had heard something utterly terrifying, the color drained instantly from her face and she wrenched her hand free from Fu Xuanmiao’s grip.

“Mother…” Fu Xuanmiao sat up from the bed, raised his right hand, curled into a fist, to his lips and coughed softly a few times. “Why has Mother come?”

His voice carried the fragility of someone barely recovered from a serious illness, and it brought Fang Shi’s retreating steps to an involuntary halt.

“Your son has been unfilial — since returning I have not come to pay my respects to Mother, Mother —”

Behind her came the faint rustling sounds of someone getting out of bed, interspersed with the low, suppressed coughs he was trying to hold back.

Fang Shi turned around and faced the man in bed with an expressionless face: “…I heard you were gravely ill. I was passing by the Rain Cicada Courtyard and came to look in on you. Now that I have looked in on you, I will take my leave. You need not get up.”

Fang Shi turned to walk out, but before she had taken two steps, the sharp, clear sound of both knees meeting the floor behind her made her stop dead in her tracks.

“Mother… When will Mother be willing to forgive me?” Fu Xuanmiao said in a hoarse voice.

Fang Shi could not help but tighten her hands into fists within her sleeves.

“Chan Yu’s sins are grave and deep, having filled Mother with a loathing that has seeped into her very bones. I know I should atone with death. Yet I dare not forget the debt of life given to me, and Chan Yu dares not let his priorities be inverted — allowing an act of atonement to place Mother in the eye of the storm.”

Fu Xuanmiao knelt on the floor, his snow-white sleeves spread around him like clouds.

He lowered his eyes. His hoarse, restrained voice flowed softly through the hushed room.

“When Great Yan fell into calamity and the cries of the people filled the land, Chan Yu volunteered to join the military, having never intended to return from the start. Every time a soldier died in battle, I was filled with regret — why was it not me who died? Even when I was forced to sample medicine for His Majesty, I could not help but think — if only this were a cup of poison.”

Fang Shi’s fingers dug into her palms. Her body, too, began to tremble faintly and uncontrollably.

If she shut her eyes, the tears she was barely holding back would burst free. But if she opened them, all that met her gaze was endless, unbroken darkness.

“The grace of ten months of bearing a child in the womb is a debt too heavy for three lifetimes to repay. If Chan Yu’s death could bring even a single smile to Mother’s face, Chan Yu would consider it no loss…”

Fang Shi could endure no longer. She spun around and cried out in fury:

“If you knew it would come to this — why did you do it in the first place!”

Hot tears burst from her eyes, streaming down that pale and hollow face.

“Mother… Your son knows he was wrong.”

A faint tremor entered Fu Xuanmiao’s controlled voice.

One large, ice-cold hand reached out, tentatively, toward Fang Shi’s hand. The instant the two touched, the sound of rain in Fang Shi’s ears swelled and expanded. All at once, she seemed to be transported back to that rainy night many years ago.

The smell of her beloved’s blood filled her nostrils.

“Don’t touch me!” She screamed and flung away Fu Xuanmiao’s hand.

The wide sleeve fell back down. The sleeve that had nothing left to hold drifted, forlorn as the last snowflake in the sky, back to the ground.

“Mother… What must I do for you to forgive me?” Fu Xuanmiao said softly. “If Mother wishes your son to die, your son can end his life before you this very moment. But if he does, it is still Mother who will be hurt the most. What else must your son do before Mother will forgive him? Can it truly be that a child of flesh and blood, born of ten months of suffering and a passage through the gates of death — is truly worth less than a complete stranger with no blood connection whatsoever?”

The last words Fu Xuanmiao spoke struck the hidden wound Fang Shi had always kept concealed. The wavering that had just begun to stir in her — born of her own son’s pleas — was swallowed whole by fury in that instant, vanishing without a trace.

“He was no stranger —” Fang Shi pressed down her rage, her already pallid face going a shade more ghastly beneath the force of suppressed anger, tinged with a faint bluish cast. “He was the person in this world who loved me most. If not for him… I would have ceased to live long ago!”

“Mother, you are wrong.” Fu Xuanmiao raised his eyes and said with composure, “I am the one in this world who loves you most.”

“If you had even a shred of feeling for me — if you truly felt gratitude for ten months spent carrying you in my womb —” Fang Shi shook with rage, her very lips drained of their last traces of color, “You would not have killed him with your own hands!”

Driving rain.

Biting autumn wind.

Ink-black night.

The metallic smell of blood on the wind.

Every last thing came surging back to life before Fang Shi’s eyes.

Nine years. Nine years had passed… and still it was vivid as though it had just occurred.

“Chan Yu did what he did — all of it was for Mother.”

Fu Xuanmiao’s words were the final straw that broke the last of Fang Shi’s strength. Her emotions finally shattered. Weeping, she crumpled to the floor.

Fu Xuanmiao looked on with a composed expression and said to the sobbing, broken Fang Shi:

“If not for your son, Mother’s shameful secret would have been found out by Father.”

Fang Shi could no longer find her voice, yet she still knew to keep shaking her head — answering the high-sounding words ringing in her ears with a face streaked with tear marks, full of revulsion.

“Nine years have already passed,” Fu Xuanmiao said. “Mother, do not let a mere servant erode the bond between us, mother and son.”

He extended his hand, intending to help Fang Shi up. She struck it away with force.

Fu Xuanmiao made no further move, only watching her in silence until her tears ran dry and her strength was spent. She lay there uselessly, staring with hollow and dim eyes at the ground, which held nothing at all.

“Someone come.”

At Fu Xuanmiao’s quiet call, a maidservant hurried into the inner chamber.

“Mother is tired. Please see her back to her room.”

The maidservant hastened forward to support Fang Shi. “Madam, this servant will take you back.”

Fu Xuanmiao declined the maidservant’s assistance and, supporting himself on his knees with his own hands, slowly rose to his feet.

Fang Shi suddenly gripped the maidservant’s hand with force, her feet planted firmly to the floor. A look of hatred poured from those lusterless eyes, piercing Fu Xuanmiao straight through the chest.

He bore her loathing gaze with an expressionless face, standing completely still.

“What would it have mattered if he had found out?” Fang Shi suddenly said.

The tear tracks on her face had not yet dried, yet a miserable and self-mocking smile had already appeared.

“He pays me no mind in ordinary times. In an entire year, only on the Mid-Autumn Festival will he come to my courtyard for a meal. What would it have mattered if he found out?” she said, tears falling as she smiled. “And besides — I had already planned to petition for my own removal from the household. I was never afraid of him knowing…”

The maidservant, who had been entirely unprepared to hear those words, went white to the lips and sank to her knees on the spot, wishing she could cut off her own ears.

“It was you… it was you who coveted the glory and wealth of the Fu family, who coveted the praise of the world and the fine reputation of having the moon fall into your arms. You were afraid of him knowing — because then you could never again be the most magnificent young gentleman under heaven. That is why you killed him… you killed the one person in the world who truly cared for me… and yet your mouth never stops saying… it was for my sake…”

Fang Shi staggered back a step and said to Fu Xuanmiao — whose lips were pressed tight — with a wretched, bitter smile:

“I will never forgive you… I hate you, and I hate myself… Why was it you who was left behind, in the end…”

She stumbled out of the inner chamber, leaving behind a maidservant trembling like a sieve, too terrified to move.

Fu Xuanmiao watched the curtain of rain swallow her stumbling figure. Then he drew his gaze back in, and his cold, indifferent eyes settled upon the maidservant still inside the room.

Despair rose and washed over the maidservant’s chest. She kowtowed frantically, begging for mercy: “Young Master, spare me — spare me — this servant heard nothing, nothing at all…”

The rain was coming down harder now.

The osmanthus blossoms scattered in the mud were crushed apart by the heavy rain.

All that remained in the air was the damp, faintly metallic scent.

Like the air on that night.

Fang Shi did not return to her room. Instead she made her way through the curtain of rain, along the path she knew by heart, to an abandoned side room that had long since been left unused.

She pushed open the weathered wooden door. Heedless of the thick dust within and the spider webs in the corners, she moved about with tears streaming down her face, searching by touch.

When Ning Yu arrived at the side room, many of the wooden furnishings inside bore traces of Fang Shi’s blood.

Her fingers had been cut open by the splinters of the wooden furniture, yet she remained entirely unaware. She searched feverishly about the room, as though possessed.

Ning Yu swallowed the bitterness rising in her heart and hurried to pull her mistress away from the dust-laden wooden bed.

“Let me go — don’t stop me…” Fang Shi struggled.

“Madam, you will not find it! Give up — how many years have passed — you will never find it!” Ning Yu said, fighting back tears.

“No — it cannot be — it must be here somewhere… He gave it to me as his last gift. I must find it, I must…”

Fang Shi murmured, pushing weakly against Ning Yu.

Every one of her slender fingers was covered in blood. The rotting wood was riddled with splinters and rusted nails in all directions, yet her eyes could offer her no help now.

“Madam…” Ning Yu could hold back no longer and wept, holding her close.

Fang Shi stopped struggling in her arms, grew quiet, and only stared blankly ahead, repeating over and over in a daze: “It must be somewhere here…”

They had promised to start over again, together, once they left the Fu family.

They had already planned out every single day of their future life.

He had been so excited — every day he would take a piece of wood and carve and carve at it, cutting his hands all over in the process. He said he wanted to give her a surprise. He said he wanted to make sure every day that followed would be filled with happiness for her. He said — he had never imagined that she, the young mistress herself, would actually favor him. Every single day now, he felt so happy it was as though he were living in a dream.

She had never told him — that with him by her side, she too felt every day to be a dream as beautiful as anything she had known.

He was a serf born into the Fang family household. He was a groom with a skilled hand for horses. He was the thick-headed young man whose eyes and feet followed the Fang family’s young mistress wherever she went. He was the great fool who had spared no effort in buying out his own indenture and then gone to extraordinary lengths to sell himself into the Fu household.

He was the person she had loved most in this life, and also the only person who had ever truly cherished her.

And now, there was nothing left of any of it.

She had never had the chance to tell him — that everything she had done was no longer for the purpose of taking revenge on Fu Ruzhi’s cold indifference. She had been with him simply because she wanted to be with him.

Between heaven and earth, there was no longer any trace of him to be found anywhere.

The one who had killed him with his own hands was her own son, bound to her by blood — and equally, her son who shared blood with him.

Was there anything more tragic in this world?

Was there any suffering more suffocating than what she felt at this moment — more tear-wringing, more silencing, that left one unable to speak or cry out, like having one’s mouth and nose sealed, placed beneath a chopping blade to be sliced apart ten thousand times over?

What little remained of her maternal love was spent guarding this secret.

Through days and nights that were like the deepest pit of hell, bearing alone the searing torment of regret.