Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Did She Once Love Xiao Heng? When Shaoyin awoke from her deep sleep that day, it seemed snow was still falling outside. The sky was dark, and lamps had been lit inside the room. Their dim, yellow light fell over the figure sitting outside the bed curtains, illuminating his tall, slender form and casting his shadow into silent stillness. Because she was dazed upon waking, and because she had dreamed of Helan just before she awoke, Shaoyin stared at the figure seated beyond the curtains, her mind hazy and confused. In her half-conscious state, Shaoyin felt as though she were still in Shuobei. She and her husband had spent half the day admiring flowers on the grasslands. Tired after returning, she had fallen asleep inside the tent while her husband, Helan, waited outside for her to wake. When she awoke, Helan would gently draw aside the tent flap and smile tenderly as he spoke to her. He might take out a small object from behind his back—perhaps a flower crown he had woven for her with his own hands, or a little rabbit he had carved himself, or a wing-bone flute he had made for her. Helan would wait for her to wake. Once she did, he would take her riding, galloping with the wind beneath the setting sun over the grasslands. They would water their horses beside the Qinglan River and watch the evening glow spread across the river’s surface, watching their two figures reflected in the rippling water, leaning against each other as a pair. When night fell and the boundless sky filled with stars, they would gaze at them together. Helan would tenderly embrace her from behind, resting his chin lightly on her shoulder. Following the direction of her finger, he would look toward one distant star after another as she showed off her knowledge of Daqi’s methods of observing the heavens, occasionally laughing softly beside her ear. Beneath that tranquil, boundless starry sky, one of Helan’s hands gently moved to her abdomen. Her own hand unconsciously fell over it as well, lightly covering the back of Helan’s hand. Beneath their warmly overlapping hands was the child they were bringing into the world. She still remembered the day they learned she was pregnant. Helan, who was usually so composed, had been so overjoyed that he did not know what to say. He had simply held her hand tightly, watching her smile, watching her smile. “Let’s give the child a name related to the stars,” Helan had said to her gently. “What do you think?” They had talked about many things beneath the stars and come up with many beautiful names related to them, but in the end, they had not settled on one. There was no need to hurry. There was still plenty of time. They could decide when she was close to giving birth, or after the child was born. There was no rush. In the end, what name had they given their child? Shaoyin’s thoughts were as bewildered as though shrouded in heavy fog. Just as she could not remember, her consciousness gradually cleared. There had been no name. They had not even waited until the time came to choose one before the child in her womb had left her and Helan far too soon. Shaoyin opened her eyes wide in full awareness. The person sitting beside her bed was not her husband, Helan. When the curtain was gently lifted, the face that entered her sight was Xiao Heng’s. In an instant, tears welled in Shaoyin’s eyes. She bit her lip tightly, but the tears still burst forth. In that moment, immense grief completely shattered the defenses around her heart. She could think of nothing and care about nothing. Her sorrow was endless, as though it might spread all the way to the end of this life. Xiao Heng could feel that Xue Shaoyin’s tears were not flowing for him. He stood beside her bed, right by her side, yet it was as though he were very, very far from her. The world she inhabited had nothing to do with him, and neither did her sorrow or her tears. It was as though all the joy and sorrow of her life had become unrelated to him, Xiao Heng, long ago. It was a long, long time before Shaoyin could temporarily restrain her grief. After forcibly pressing her sorrow back into the depths of her heart, Shaoyin suddenly realized that Xiao Heng’s reaction while she cried had been strangely still. It was the complete opposite of the fervor he had shown these past few days—a silence as deep as a pool of water, whose surface had frozen inch by inch in the bitter winter cold. When she had suddenly begun to cry, Xiao Heng had neither asked what was wrong nor comforted her. He had not wiped away her tears of his own accord or forcibly pulled her into his arms to soothe her. He had not, as he had over the past few days, anxiously shown his concern for her or tried to demonstrate his “feelings.” Xiao Heng had simply watched her in silence, quietly observing her tears and sorrow. From beginning to end, he had not said a word, nor had he made any unnecessary movement. Even now, after she had stopped crying, Xiao Heng did not ask where her tears had come from. He merely brought her a handkerchief, a bowl of medicinal broth, and a dish of sweets. In a gentle voice, he said that the medicine was still hot and urged her to drink it as soon as possible so that she could recover sooner. Shaoyin thanked him and accepted the bowl with both hands. She wanted to be alone and quiet, so she ignored the sour, bitter taste of the medicine and drank it quickly. When she set down the empty bowl, Shaoyin had not yet voiced her request to be left alone. Xiao Heng had already brought the dish of sweets to her. Several pieces of pine-nut candy lay on it. “Have a piece of candy to freshen your mouth,” Xiao Heng said. “It will not only take away the bitterness in your mouth, but also sweeten your heart.” As he spoke, he smiled faintly. “Do you remember? These were your words to me.” Shaoyin remembered. It had been when Xiao Heng had fallen ill. She had insisted on going to the Eastern Palace to care for him, driving Jiang Ningyan—the woman Xiao Heng admired—far away. One moment she had been feeding Xiao Heng medicine, and the next she had been wiping his face, annoying him to no end. Xiao Heng had never had much patience with her under normal circumstances, and naturally had even less inclination to deal with her while ill. When she had told him to eat candy to soothe his throat, he had simply pressed his lips together and refused. As Shaoyin recalled this, she heard Xiao Heng say, “Actually, I did eat that piece of pine-nut candy. I ate it after you left. It was very sweet, and very delicious. After eating it, my heart seemed to grow sweet as well.” Shaoyin did not know why Xiao Heng had suddenly brought this up, nor did she know how to respond. Then she heard him ask her softly, “Ayin, you used to… like me, didn’t you?” Had she liked Xiao Heng? Over the many years of the past, Shaoyin had thought about this question. She had thought about it during the years when she had been infatuated with Xiao Heng, and she had thought about it when he had broken her heart. Later, after meeting and falling in love with Helan, she had wondered as well: During those years she had spent in Daqi, had she truly liked Xiao Heng? What she had felt for Xiao Heng—had it been love? If her first encounter with Xiao Heng had not been his saving her from the brink of death, but merely an ordinary passing by, would she still have admired him for so many years, remaining hopelessly devoted no matter how coldly he treated her? After a long silence, Shaoyin said, “Your Majesty, what I felt for you in the past was merely gratitude for your saving my life, which I mistakenly took for affection.” “Because you pulled me from the water, my feelings for you over all those years were as though I were still drowning, desperately trying to cling to you, just as I had wanted to grasp the last straw of salvation while I was in the water. Such feelings were neither normal nor the affection between a man and a woman. They were merely a mistaken fixation of mine in the past.” On the previous occasions when she had tried to deny her feelings for Xiao Heng, he had fallen into a frenzy, desperately trying to refute her words. He had stubbornly believed she was lying or acting out of anger. Sometimes, he had even stepped forward and held her tightly in his arms, refusing to let her say any more of those “insincere” words. But now, Xiao Heng merely stood quietly beside the bed and listened to her. His expression was calm, and his voice was calm as well. After hearing her out, he simply raised a hand to tuck the blankets around her and said softly, “Rest well.” Xiao Heng left just like that, easily giving her the quiet she had wanted. It was a long while after Xiao Heng departed before Shaoyin came back to herself. She felt that the Xiao Heng who had been there when she awoke was somewhat different from the Xiao Heng who had taken her to see the peonies, and from the Xiao Heng who had been so obsessive and unhinged over the previous few days. Perhaps Xiao Heng was about to return to normal. The days of madness they had recently endured should have been nothing more than a chaotic dream, both for him and for her. Xiao Heng had left, but Shaoyin still could not rest properly. Her thoughts were filled with her husband and her child. Though the tears in her eyes had stopped, the sorrow in her heart seemed like a river of grief that would never run dry. Unable to sleep, Shaoyin rose from the bed and asked the palace attendants to find her materials for making a lantern. She wanted to make an everlasting prayer lantern for her husband and child, to entrust her grief to it and pray that they would have peace and good fortune in their next lives. The matter of County Princess Yongning requesting materials to make a lantern soon reached the Western Warm Pavilion of Zichen Palace. When Chief Steward Cheng An reported it to His Majesty, he saw that the emperor showed no reaction and continued drinking cup after cup of wine. After returning from Plum Grove, His Majesty had begun drinking without saying a word. Nothing could be read from his expression. He merely drank in silence and gazed at the sky beyond the warm pavilion as it darkened bit by bit. Gradually, the sky became completely black and the night deepened. His Majesty held the wine jug and leaned against the open palace doors. At that moment, a bright prayer sky lantern rose unsteadily from Plum Grove in Zichen Palace, ascending into the night snow that swirled across the heavens. Snowflakes fell around the sky lantern, seeming to fall into Xiao Heng’s eyes as well. Once, back in the Eastern Palace, on a certain night, a young girl had personally made a prayer lantern for him. Stroke by stroke, she had carefully written his name on it, sending her feelings for him high into the night sky. While Cheng An was still looking at the lantern, he suddenly heard a sharp crash. The wine jug in His Majesty’s hand had slipped and shattered on the ground. As though possessed, His Majesty began walking toward the lantern. At first he moved slowly, but his pace grew faster and faster until he was almost running. Yet the lantern continued flying higher and farther in the night wind. It was impossible to catch up to it. As Cheng An anxiously and bewilderedly ran after His Majesty, he saw the emperor suddenly turn around and order in a sharp voice, a faint madness showing between his brows, “Bring me a horse! Bring me a horse!” Then, right there within the palace, His Majesty mounted his horse and galloped wildly after the prayer sky lantern, chasing it in the direction it had flown, as though he could pursue it all the way out of the palace. Cheng An was terrified beyond words. He had no idea what had happened to His Majesty. He could only chase after him helplessly as the emperor’s figure grew farther and farther away, vanishing into the boundless wind and snow of the deep night. The pounding of the hooves came in relentless beats, like heavy drumsticks striking violently against Xiao Heng’s heart. He seemed terribly drunk, and yet it also seemed he was not drunk in the slightest. He urged his horse swiftly through the darkness and snow, desperately pursuing the distant sky lantern, as though he were chasing after the last fixation he had left. The last fixation he was unwilling to face and unable to release. He had to see the name written on the lantern with his own eyes. That name… would be his. It would be his.