Still Secretly In Love With My Enemy Today - Chapter 33

Chapter 33: 

 

The mere thought of Xie Huaishuang staying in the Temple—even for just a single day—made it impossible for me to sleep peacefully.

 

“What is it?”

 

Xie Huaishuang gave my sleeve a very light tug from behind. I didn’t dare turn over to face him.

 

When dawn approached, he would make his way to the Temple’s temporary residence in Star-Gazing City, pretending he had escaped from my clutches. I wouldn’t see him again until he reappeared on the divine pedestal, and I made my move to “kidnap” him.

 

Xie Huaishuang was right; this was a potent catalyst for the public. The purpose of our years of wandering and struggle was to undermine the Temple’s prestige. Sabotaging ten ordinary ceremonies or performing a hundred satirical plays wouldn’t cause half the ripple effect that this single act would.

 

But still… but still.

 

“You don’t need to worry about me.”

 

Xie Huaishuang tugged my sleeve again. “The Temple is desperate for me to return; they won’t do anything to me. I’ve reviewed all those hidden preparations with you; nothing will go wrong.”

 

I finally turned around. Across the blanket that served as our boundary line, I stared into his eyes in the dim lamplight.

 

“Right now… if I lose sight of you for even a moment,” I pressed the blanket down slightly so he could see my lips, “I can’t feel at ease.”

 

When day broke, he would be going back to those people—the people who had never treated him as a human being.

 

In the Temple, no one would worry about his new or old injuries, or remind him not to catch a cold. No one would give him his favorite cherry crisps or plum blossom cakes. No one would look at the roses, lilacs, and begonias with him.

 

Those people would only lock him deep inside a gilded cage.

 

What if the Temple breaks him again—this Xie Huaishuang whom I’ve spent so much time and effort to carefully nurture back to health?

 

“Enough.”

 

Xie Huaishuang remained on his side of the bed, but he reached out, his fingertips pressing through my sleeve against the space between my brows, trying to smooth out the furrowed skin.

 

“I’m not that fragile. You chased me with the intent to kill for ten years and couldn’t do anything to me; they certainly can’t.”

 

There he went again. Every time he mentioned that, I felt a pang of guilt.

 

“I didn’t… I didn’t actually want to kill you.”

 

Xie Huaishuang laughed. “I know.”

 

I was just halfway through a sigh of relief when I heard him add softly, “In the beginning, though… I truly did want to kill you.”

 

“…”

 

“Did you hate me that much?” I immediately scrambled to recall every detail of our first meeting ten years ago. What did I do to offend him so?

 

“It wasn’t your fault.” His touch on my brow varied between light and firm, his voice gentle. “Back then, I knew nothing. I only knew that whatever the Temple told me to do, I did. I don’t blame you.”

 

Back to the Temple again. What do those people know? They don’t even know how to tend to a flower. But I can never stop him from doing what he wants to do.

 

“You must be careful,” I couldn’t help but nag him once more. “Send a signal the moment there’s a problem. Don’t worry about anything else; leave everything to me, okay?”

 

“Underestimating me again.” Xie Huaishuang withdrew his hand. “Just you wait and see.”

 

“It’s not that I underestimate you.”

 

Objectively, I knew that since he could see, possessed sixty percent of his power, and was armed from his hair down to his fingertips, the Temple wouldn’t be able to touch him for a while.

 

But I was still worried. It was irrational and unshakable.

 

“Just one day.” Xie Huaishuang suddenly smiled, looking at me from his pillow, half his face submerged in shadow. “Only one day. I’ll wait for you to come kidnap me.”

 

“Alright.” I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t look at him. “I’ll be there to kidnap you.”

 

“When that happens…”

 

“When that happens, what?”

 

Xie Huaishuang stopped mid-sentence again, burying half his face in the pillow, his voice carrying a trace of a smile.

 

“We’ll talk about it then.”

 

…

 

As dawn neared, we began our preparations.

 

Normally at this hour, he would be crouching in the courtyard studying his plants for fifteen minutes before practicing his sword for an hour. I would have been able to watch him that entire time.

 

Curse the Temple.

 

“Currently…” He looked at himself in the mirror, turning left and right. “I don’t exactly look like I’ve had a miserable time under your thumb.”

 

The worn hair ribbon from Linlang Pavilion hadn’t been thrown away. I found it among a pile of ornate hairpins and ropes. “Is this the one you mentioned?”

 

“That’s it.”

 

He took it and tied his hair low as usual, then thought for a moment and pulled his hair into a bit of a mess. After a moment, he reached a troubled conclusion: “It still doesn’t look right.”

 

We both fell silent.

 

The Temple knew perfectly well that we had been at each other’s throats for ten years. Logically, if he fell into my hands, he should be covered in wounds and subjected to utter devastation.

 

“Don’t smile,” I told him.

 

Lately, the corners of his mouth and eyes were always unconsciously touched with a faint, shimmering smile, like a flowering tree stretching its branches in spring. I suspected he didn’t even realize it.

 

He nodded. “I won’t be able to smile at them anyway. I’ll only be like this.”

 

He hadn’t shown me this expression in a long time—cold eyes, lips pressed into a thin line. When he was expressionless, the striking beauty of his features became even more pronounced.

 

I rolled up his sleeves. After repeated applications of medicine, those layers of old scars had faded significantly.

 

“Here… let me help you paint them.”

 

Disguise was a mandatory course at Iron Cloud City. Following my memory, I began to redraw those faded marks one by one, making them look like fresh wounds.

 

“You know how to do this too?”

 

I hummed a response, focusing on painting a bruise near his wrist. “Try not to let them touch water; they fade easily.”

 

Xie Huaishuang agreed, then pointed to his cheek. “What about my face? Let’s fix that too.”

 

He seemed to be starting to enjoy himself, looking in the mirror repeatedly, quite satisfied with a long scar near the corner of his eye.

 

“It looks real,” I heard him mutter as I packed up. “This looks a bit more miserable.”

 

Between the tattered clothes and the “injuries” everywhere, Xie Huaishuang spent another fifteen minutes fussing before he was satisfied.

 

“How is it?” He stood by the window, looking at me proudly. “Looks the part now, right? They’ll definitely think I’ve had a very, very miserable time with you…”

 

Even though I knew it was an act, just looking at him made my heart ache.

 

“Are you uncomfortable?”

 

Before I could speak, he smiled again. “Then that means it’s working. I must look truly pathetic right now.”

 

“…”

 

Pathetic? He looked quite happy to me.

 

“Don’t let your guard down. Those old geezers at the Temple are full of schemes.” I performed one last check on the hidden weapons, armor, and signal tubes I had hidden on him. “If anything feels wrong…”

 

“…I’ll send a signal immediately and won’t try to be a hero.” Xie Huaishuang cut me off. “I’ve practically memorized it by now.”

 

Alright. It seemed I really had nagged him too many times.

 

…Does he actually hate people who nag?

 

After checking the mechanism on his ankle, I looked up at him while still crouching, trying to gauge from his expression if he truly disliked my fussing. But he was still smiling, his eyes lit by a sliver of sunlight from the window as he looked down at me.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

 

Our eyes met, and that smile of his suddenly turned flustered, as if he were feeling awkward for some reason. The green ripples of spring water seemed to pour down along that ray of sunlight, flowing past my ears and through my heart. I couldn’t say anything else; after a long silence, I just repeated: “…Be careful.”

 

He looked at me with that same touch of awkwardness for a moment, then crouched down too. His right hand hesitated in the air before moving forward an inch, landing as light as a butterfly on my brow.

 

“I know. I will.”

 

…

 

Xie Huaishuang hadn’t worn such ugly clothes in a long time. I hid on the opposite roof, watching his figure flash as he entered the residence where the Temple was staying.

 

I waited on the roof for two hours until I heard the small copper bell at my waist chime once.

 

If everything went according to plan, he would press the mechanism on his wrist, and the bell in my hand would ring once to let me know his progress. The ceremony was tomorrow morning. I still had an entire day to wait before I could take him back.

 

I went over the entire attack and defense map in my head in great detail. I checked the sun; less than four hours had passed.

 

The Temple residence remained calm, with only a few people occasionally entering or leaving. As soon as I was idle, my mind began to wander again, and I started the thirteenth mental rehearsal of the kidnapping process.

 

Halfway through, the bell rang again. Per our agreement, he was to send a signal every two hours to let me know everything was normal and he was unharmed.

 

I let out a sigh of relief, changed my position, and continued squatting on the roof, staring at the opposite side.

 

When the sun set and the lights began to flicker on, I couldn’t see even a hint of his shadow. He should be showing those old geezers his scars now, perhaps with a furrowed brow and a cold voice, recounting the “tragic” time he spent after being abducted.

 

Even if the Temple doesn’t treat people like human beings—I thought, clenching my jaw—even if they’re heartless, they have to coax him back into working for them now, so they must at least put on an act, right?

 

I wondered if anyone had given him extra clothes, or if the food was to his liking.

 

When I was with him every day, there was only a small flicker of a flame in my heart. Now that he wasn’t before my eyes, that flicker had suddenly become a wildfire, burning across the plains of my soul.

 

I liked him even more now than when he was right here. Liked him enough that I couldn’t sit still.

 

Zhou Xun landed behind me at some point. Hearing the movement, I spared him a glance.

 

“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” He waved the letter I had sent him in the middle of the night. “Kidnapping the High Priest of the Temple? Are you certain?”

 

“Certain.”

 

“If we pull it off, it’ll be a massive victory. But you—”

 

“Wait.” I saw a figure very much like Xie Huaishuang flash under the corridor before vanishing into the shadows. I waited a long time, but the shadow didn’t reappear.

 

“Senior Brother, what are you doing? That High Priest isn’t some—”

 

“He’ll come with me.”

 

There was no time to explain to Zhou Xun. I turned to look at him; he was staring at me blankly, and after a long moment, his eyes suddenly widened.

 

“You… no. Wait a minute.” He pointed at the residence, his voice trembling. “Tell me… who exactly was that person I met the other day?”

 

Before going back to the Temple, Xie Huaishuang had hesitated for a long time before telling me: “When we tell Zhou Xun about this, he’ll definitely ask for a reason and likely figure it out anyway. You… you can just tell him my identity then.”

 

Looking at Zhou Xun’s face, I could see he had already guessed most of it. I nodded. “The High Priest of the Temple.”

 

Zhou Xun’s expression went from shock to bewilderment, then to sudden realization, before finally turning very distorted.

 

“Senior Brother… you’ve really… gone all in on this, haven’t you?”

 

All in? Zhou Xun didn’t answer me, merely muttering to himself: “To bring down the Temple, you actually entered the fray yourself with your own body?”

 

He glanced at the residence. “But then again, it seems you’re not exactly losing out either…”

 

“…”

 

He finished and nodded to himself. “I see. I see.”

 

…What on earth was he imagining?