Still Secretly In Love With My Enemy Today - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: 

 

Before Xie Huaishuang could pull back, I grabbed his cuff first.

 

He was a man who lived up to his name—covered in frost and snow—never showing a ripple of emotion even when sealing a throat with his blade. How could he have such an expression now?

 

As I leaned in through the dim moonlight, trying to catch his gaze which he was deliberately averting, I could only come up with one explanation: he must truly be quite badly injured and not thinking clearly.

 

—Why was I getting angry with a person in this state?

 

“I heard everything you just said.”

 

After writing this sentence, I looked up to observe his expression. His brows were still drooping, and the shadows of his eyelashes fell long across his face.

 

“Whatever else you want to say, I’m listening—I’m listening to all of it.”

 

His eyelashes lifted. His eyes remained unfocused, wandering for a moment before landing on me. His voice was low, almost swallowed by the night.

 

“Then… are you willing to leave?”

 

Here we go again.

 

“I’m not leaving,” I told him bluntly. “I came here knowing nothing, and I’m supposed to leave knowing nothing? Based on what?”

 

The filth of the Temple, their murderous dealings, this bizarre poison—why should he take all of this mess onto his own shoulders alone?

 

While he was still unconscious, I sat by the window behind the screen and curtains, constantly thinking of my particularly difficult and delicate purple magnolia. When the snow piled up on the branches, it would snap with a crack, leaving the break exposed and glaring.

 

Flowers never understand. Why must they bear all the weight of the frost and snow?

 

“This matter has nothing to do with you or anyone else.” As soon as Xie Huaishuang opened his mouth, it was something I didn’t want to hear, and he said it with such earnestness. “Messy things… one doesn’t need to know all of them.”

 

I was thinking of how to rebut him when I suddenly felt the space beneath my fingertips go empty. Just as I wondered why he had pulled his hand away, a bit of warmth covered the back of my hand.

 

He had turned his hand over to press down on mine—porcelain white with a hint of blue, his knuckles distinct.

 

Writing on his hand all these days had been a matter of necessity, born of a perfectly valid reason; neither of us had felt awkward about it. But this—this unprompted overlapping of hands—what did it mean?

 

“You are very powerful. You are the most powerful person I have ever met. You don’t need to win against anyone to prove that.”

 

I was still staring at his hand when those words struck me. Startled, I looked up at him.

 

“I’m not driving you away… I don’t dislike you. It’s because I think you are… very good, that I say it’s not worth it for you to get dragged into this.”

 

He thinks I am… very good?

 

He sat back, the shadows on his face flickering as they passed.

 

“You have already helped a lot with the Linlang Pavilion matter. I can handle the rest myself. Don’t stay here, okay?”

 

In the span of a few sentences, he had already released my hand. The bit of warmth left on the back of my hand vanished instantly into the spring chill.

 

He was right. To win against him, getting entangled in a pile of trouble that sounded exhausting—even risking myself—seemed truly not worth it.

 

—But what if I wasn’t doing this just to win against him?

 

I looked at him, my thoughts a chaotic whirl. What if I simply felt that Xie Huaishuang, as a person, was important—very, very important, perhaps the most important to me?

 

It felt as if something had suddenly melted and begun to flow. Facing the silent Xie Huaishuang, the moment this thought emerged, many things suddenly made sense.

 

Xie Huaishuang was important. That was why I had to travel six hundred miles day and night to find him. That was why I stayed in a place like this day after day with him. That was why I promised Ye Jingwei ten mechanical puppets just to get her to come out. That was why the moment I couldn’t find him, I was consumed by a fear beyond measure.

 

I didn’t know why he was so important—but I understood it now. Xie Huaishuang was important to me.

 

“No,” I told him, stroke by stroke. “It’s not that winning against you is important. You are important. You are important to me.”

 

Xie Huaishuang seemed to have been about to say something, but he froze. He shook his head blankly, his brow furrowing.

 

“I don’t think you truly want me to leave, either.”

 

I recalled my guess from a few days ago. After a moment’s hesitation, I voiced it, and saw Xie Huaishuang’s eyes snap upward.

 

“I don’t care about the things you mentioned, and I can handle them. You say you have things you want to do; I also have things I want—and must—do. If I left now, I would truly be anxious for the rest of my life.”

 

Xie Huaishuang didn’t speak, his fingers curling slightly.

 

“And you are important to me. If you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”

 

Pausing, I looked down and continued writing: “Can you tell me now?”

 

Knowing he couldn’t see, I still wanted to look into his eyes.

 

“Your injury, your poison, and that man just now—what is really going on with all of it?”

 

Xie Huaishuang’s gaze stayed on me for a long time. He remained silent, sitting like a statue in the dim moonlight, with only his eyelashes trembling occasionally.

 

I thought he was going to stay silent all night, but then he suddenly blinked, and a single tear fell.

 

I was startled.

 

How could he be crying?

 

I had never seen him shed a single tear. Not when I disrupted his god-entertaining ceremony, not when he suffered horrific wounds at my hands, not when he was being humiliated in Linlang Pavilion, and not when he was drenched in cold sweat from his own pain.

 

In all those moments where ordinary people would have cried their eyes dry, he had seemed oblivious. Why was he crying now?

 

I was dazed until he lowered his head to wipe the corner of his eye. Snapping out of it, I frantically asked in his hand: “What’s wrong? Are you in pain somewhere, or…”

 

“No.”

 

He shook his head, his voice low. When he looked up, other than a slight redness at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t faded, no other abnormality could be seen.

 

“Do you really want to know?”

 

“I do.”

 

Xie Huaishuang’s brow relaxed, and he nodded. “Fine, I’ll tell you everything. What… what do you want to know?”

 

I looked him over again. I asked: “How do you feel right now?”

 

He didn’t seem to expect that question. He froze for a second, then shook his head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine now.”

 

Liar again.

 

“Then what happened just now… and on the first night? What kind of poison are you affected by?”

 

Xie Huaishuang thought for a moment, sighed softly, and raised his eyes. “These things… fine, I’ll tell you from the beginning.”

 

“You asked me how I left the Temple.” Xie Huaishuang sat motionless, his eyes facing me. “It was my own choice to leave.”

 

“Why? Because they treated you poorly?”

 

“Not exactly. I was never short of food or clothing.”

 

He said “not exactly,” even shaking his head and giving a small smile, but I could clearly see the loneliness in his eyes.

 

The Temple clearly didn’t treat him well at all. He had seen nothing—no purple magnolias, no iron carriages, no misty spring rain. A perfectly good person had been molded into a sword-like personality: unfeeling, hurting others and himself.

 

“Then why?”

 

Xie Huaishuang’s gaze shifted as he said slowly: “I felt… sometimes I felt that things didn’t make sense.”

 

“Divine power didn’t make sense. They said the Kite-Mechs and weapons were all bestowed by the God of Xiling. They said you were heretics and would be cursed by the God, but your weapons were actually very powerful—much more powerful than mine.” He spoke faster and faster. “The offerings didn’t make sense either. Over the years, I saw more and more people at the foot of the altar, but they didn’t seem to be living well. Instead, the offerings they handed over were more and more.”

 

“Like this… many things started to not make sense to me. But I only knew about the things inside the Temple; I never knew what the outside world was like.”

 

He shook his head and repeated: “It didn’t make sense.”

 

“So you wanted to leave?”

 

“Yes.” He lowered his eyes. “I felt that many things in the world might be different from what they said. There must be something I didn’t know. I wanted to find out… but they would never let me go.”

 

“I tried to run, but there were too many guards. I didn’t make it.”

 

Xie Huaishuang glossed over it in one sentence, as if expecting me not to think too much of it.

 

—That was likely the reason I hadn’t seen him once for six whole months. What could the Temple have done to him during those days? I could guess well enough.

 

“I knew why they wouldn’t let me go. I was useful to them, and I could only be useful while I was kept in that muddled state.”

 

Xie Huaishuang smiled as he reached this point—his deep green eyes like two dark pools reflecting the moonlight. I remembered his words from a few days ago, “It was of my own seeking,” and suddenly guessed something.

 

“So,” it felt absurd and unbelievable as I tried to organize my words, “you… you simply crippled yourself, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He nodded. “I didn’t want to keep doing those things in a muddled state. I took a gamble. If I were useless to them, what would be the point of keeping me locked up?”

 

I was stunned by the extent of his naivety. “If you were truly useless, they wouldn’t have let you go; they would have just killed you—”

 

“I know.” He was very calm about it. “That was exactly what I wanted. A gamble. They certainly wouldn’t let me leave alive. To get out, this was the only way.”

 

“They weren’t satisfied, so they forced a bowl of medicine down me. While drinking it, I found a way to protect my heart’s meridians. Though I lost my sight and hearing, I waited until they left and crawled out on my own.”

 

He didn’t even flinch as he spoke; his eyes were shining in the moonlight.

 

“Then you…” For the first time, words felt like rusted iron, dragged from my throat with such difficulty. “Did you ever think… what if you lost the gamble?”

 

“I was prepared to accept the loss.” Xie Huaishuang raised his gaze. “Regardless, I wanted to know the truth—even a little bit of it, and I would be content.”

 

His voice was soft, yet it landed in my ears and heart with the weight of ten thousand pounds.

 

I had always thought he had been pushed from his pedestal by others, but it turned out he had leaped of his own accord. From the thousand-foot-high altar into the unknown depths of the mortal world.

 

When I studied with the teacher in the schoolhouse, I memorized many books just so I wouldn’t be punished by having to copy them twenty times. I had memorized them, but I hadn’t understood them.

 

I didn’t understand how a broken sword could still have a sharp edge, or how a shattered mirror could still reflect light. But I suddenly remembered those lines now.

 

Xie Huaishuang watched me quietly from three feet away. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say.

 

And then I knew the rest of the story. Falling from the clouds of the altar, down and further down, stumbling along to piece together his so-called “truth.”

 

“At the beginning, I was very lost… I couldn’t figure it out even more.” Xie Huaishuang continued on his own. “I felt what the Temple said was wrong, but I didn’t know what the truth should be. When I met good people, I thought the world was good. When I entered Linlang Pavilion, I thought the world was bad. After staying here for a while, I felt the world wasn’t that bad after all—there are many good and bad people… It took a long time for me to understand. No matter what, we are all just humans. What the world is like is decided by the many, many people in it, not by a god.”

 

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly as he shook his head. “And those things I asked you about… you probably found them boring; they were very simple things… I just learned too slowly and took a long time to understand.”

 

“No.”

 

I suddenly knew why he had pressed his hand over mine like that earlier. It was because he had so much to say but didn’t know where to start, so he used another way to show he was being very, very earnest.

 

I took his hand, just as he had done, cradling his porcelain-white fingers, and repeated to him: “You didn’t learn slowly. Everything you said was right.”

 

He didn’t pull his hand away, but just looked in my direction. “Really?”

 

“Really.”

 

“The Temple can’t fool you anymore. You’ve seen so many people and thought about so many things; you even know how gears work. You’ve learned very, very quickly and very, very well.”

 

I suddenly remembered a sword I once forged. The blade was unusually sharp and reflected light brilliantly, but it was extremely thin and brittle. I never dared use it, so I kept it tucked away.

 

“Anyway… that’s how it is.”

 

After Xie Huaishuang finished speaking, he fell silent.

 

“Then this time, the state you were in…”

 

Xie Huaishuang interrupted: “It was also because the poison took effect. So it’s nothing; don’t worry about it.”

 

His explanation sounded fine, but I vaguely felt something didn’t quite add up. While I was pondering, Xie Huaishuang spoke again: “Have you truly made up your mind? If the Temple finds me, they won’t let it go. The relationship between Linlang Pavilion and the Temple is also deeper than I thought…”

 

I set that thought aside for the moment and told him: “Yes.”

 

“So what if the Temple finds us? Except for you, everyone else is easy to deal with.”

 

That was the honest truth. Every time I was cornered by the Temple, it was always because Xie Huaishuang was there. At that thought, I gently poked his palm.

 

“Besides, we already agreed to burn down Linlang Pavilion, let everyone go, and take you away…”

 

I paused as I wrote this, waiting a moment before asking him again: “Do you want to come with me?”

 

Actually, compared to tearing down Linlang Pavilion, I was much less sure of this. I stared at him somewhat nervously.

 

Xie Huaishuang’s brow relaxed and then tightened; his eyelashes rose and fell. The deep green light in his eyes flickered. After a long time, he spoke.

 

“Didn’t I say it already?” he said softly. “I’m going with you.”

 

His hand, which I was holding, turned slightly. His fingertips brushed against my wrist, his thumb passing over my palm, his old sword-calluses rubbing against mine.

 

It was clearly a brush against my hand, so why did it make my heart tremble like this?

 

Xie Huaishuang repeated: “From the very beginning… from the very beginning, it wasn’t a lie.”

 

I shifted my gaze from his hand and looked up at the trace of moisture at the corner of his eye. My other hand paused in mid-air for a moment, but in the end, I reached out and wiped it away.

 

What exactly was that single tear for?