Chapter 18: Spending the Night

“Ah, Young Miss, you have mistaken me for someone else. It is me—your maid, Qingyun.”

The force on her wrist made Qingyun’s brows draw together slightly, but she did not struggle hard. Instead, she softened her voice, trying to rouse Yueli’s blurred consciousness.

In the silent room, her voice sounded especially clear and gentle.

“Could you let go first, all right? Otherwise I cannot change your cloth.”

As she spoke, she tried using her other hand to gently pry apart Yueli’s tightly clenched fingers.

Yet the sensation at her fingertips, and the resistance she felt, made her inwardly start.

This girl looked so small and thin, and at this moment she was burning with fever and drifting in a haze, yet the hand gripping her possessed an astonishing strength.

Those five slender fingers clamped around her wrist like iron tongs, the knuckles standing out white from exertion, as though Yueli had spent the last of her remaining strength to seize the only support she could sense in the darkness.

If Qingyun truly wished to free herself, it would not have been difficult.

Though she had only just drawn qi into her body, her strength was already somewhat greater than that of ordinary girls her age.

But when her gaze fell upon Yueli’s flushed face, burned red with fever, and when she saw the dried tear tracks still clinging to the corners of her eyes and the lashes that trembled with unease even in sleep, that impulse to use force faded away.

If she pried the fingers apart by force, it would certainly hurt her. It might even leave bruises on those thin little wrists.

“What a speechless-inducing Young Miss you are.”

Qingyun sighed soundlessly and gave up any thought of struggling free.

She could only follow that stubborn pull and remain half-bent, half-crouching in that awkward posture beside the bed.

She thought that perhaps, once the medicinal effect fully settled in and Yueli fell into a deeper sleep, her hand would naturally loosen.

So beneath the wavering circle of dim lamplight, she remained there like that, one hand tightly seized, the other still holding the basin of water that had already grown half-cool, frozen beside the bed in a state that was equal parts helpless and faintly amusing.

Time trickled by slowly in the silence, and the darkness outside the window grew deeper and deeper.

Later, when her legs had gone numb from crouching and her waist ached badly, she feared making some sound that would disturb the sick girl, so she began shifting her body little by little, as carefully as possible.

In the end, she turned sideways and sat down on the cold, hard footboard by the bed, her back resting against the equally cold bedframe.

She set the basin of water lightly at her feet.

As the night deepened, chill seeped through the floorboards and the edge of the bed into her thin clothing.

Qingyun curled up and carelessly draped another outer garment over herself to ward off the cold.

Fatigue gradually came over her, and her eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

At her ear was the sound of Yueli’s breathing, which had gradually become calm and even. Now and then there came one or two slight coughs, but compared with before, it was already much better. That Clear Spirit Pill seemed to have taken effect.

In the end, drowsiness overcame everything else. Maintaining that awkward posture, Qingyun leaned against the bed, her head tilted to one side, and before she knew it, she had fallen asleep.

Her hand was still held fast in Yueli’s grasp.

Moonlight moved soundlessly, slipping from one side of the lattice window to the other, until at last it faded away.

————

Outside the window came the faint first cry of a bird, crisp and clear as it broke the silence before dawn. The sky shifted from dense black to dark gray, then gradually began to show a pale fish-belly white.

The first morning light, soft and dim, passed through the torn window paper and spilled into the room, illuminating the drifting dust in the air.

The little figure on the bed had her lashes tremble lightly a few times before slowly opening her eyes.

The first thing that entered Yueli’s sight was the familiar yet dilapidated canopy above her head.

She blinked in a daze, and beneath the morning light her golden pupils regained their clarity, though they still held the blank softness of someone only just awakening from serious illness. Supporting herself with weak arms, she slowly sat up.

Then she froze.

A strange lightness, something she had not felt in a very long time, made her go still.

It was utterly different from how she normally felt each time she awoke—normally, it always seemed as though some invisible weight were crushing her down, as though her organs and bowels were steeped in stagnant cold, and as though her thoughts were so heavy they had been filled with lead.

At this moment, although her body still carried some post-illness weakness and fatigue, and though there was still a trace of heat in her breathing, that cold and heaviness that had always clung to her, buried deep in her bones, had clearly lessened by a great deal.

Her chest no longer felt as though a stone were pressing upon it, and even her thoughts seemed much clearer.

“...What is going on?”

Without thinking, she raised a hand and touched her forehead.

It felt warm beneath her fingers, but the high fever had already broken, leaving only the ordinary residual heat that followed illness. Could it be that what happened last night had truly been... a “dream”?

She had no memory at all of her birth mother, who had died young.

But last night, in that abyss where her mind had drifted half-conscious between pain and fever, she truly had “seen” a vague and gentle figure.

That figure had sat by the bed, softly wiping away the feverish heat from her skin and bringing with it a coolness that she could not help but cling to.

Within that dim, wavering circle of light, that silent protection and comfort had felt so real, so warm, that in the depths of her subconscious she had stubbornly believed it could only be her mother.

That brief feeling of being cherished had, in the barrenness of her memories, become a precious and extravagant dream.

Just as she sat there slightly lost, trying to hold onto those lingering warm fragments of the dream, a very soft, very steady sound of breathing came from beside her.

“?”

Yueli instantly became alert. Her small body tensed instinctively, and her golden eyes, carrying their usual distance and wariness, swept sharply toward the side of the bed.

Only then did she discover with surprise that her right hand seemed to be gripping something very tightly. Lowering her head, she saw—

That new maid, Qingyun, was curled up on the footboard beside her bed.

Only a faded old outer garment had been casually draped over her body, and she was sleeping deeply.

That freckled face, which usually wore either an obedient or stubborn expression, seemed especially quiet now in the morning light, even a little weary, with faint shadows beneath her eyes.

A few loose strands of hair had fallen beside her cheek, rising and falling ever so slightly with her shallow breathing.

And Yueli’s right hand was still clutching Qingyun’s wrist in an iron grip.

Because she had held it for the entire night, even her own fingers felt stiff and numb, the knuckles pale from exertion.

On the wheat-colored skin of Qingyun’s wrist was a clear, startling ring of red marks.

“…………”

Yueli did not immediately scold or flare up as she usually did whenever someone invaded her territory.

She only sat there, stunned, quietly looking at the scene before her—at the sleeping girl beside her, and at the hands that remained tightly linked.

The fragments of last night’s memories, broken yet not unreal, slowly and clearly came back to her like a rising tide:

The unbearable alternation of heat and cold, the violent coughing that seemed to tear at her lungs, the suffocating sense of endless darkness... and then the firm knock at the door, the figure who came inside—

Followed by the cool cloths changed again and again upon her forehead, and the patient hands that wiped her neck and arms.

That careful attention, those real touches—no dream could explain them.

It was this maid, who had only arrived a few days ago and who was always provoking her anger, who had stayed here and taken care of her through the whole night when she was at her sickest and most helpless.

She clearly... clearly could have ignored her.

Just like the servants assigned here before, who, upon discovering that she was ill, either kept far away for fear of catching her sickness and being dragged into trouble, or perfunctorily brought over a bowl of medicine and then afterward begged for transfer with every excuse they could think of.

No one had ever stayed beside her like this all night, changing cloth after cloth, and even... allowing herself to be held in such a grip, sleeping on this cold, hard floor because of it.

Yueli’s gaze moved slowly from Qingyun’s sleeping face, which in slumber looked especially quiet and harmless, down to their joined hands.

Her own hand, pale from years of poor health, was still stubbornly clasped around Qingyun’s wrist, leaving a mark that could not be ignored.

An emotion wholly unfamiliar and impossibly complicated, like a stone dropped into a still lake, sent circle after circle of ripples through the cold silence of her heart.

It felt a little astringent, a little swollen, a little at a loss, and hidden somewhere within it was even the faintest trace of warmth—so faint that even she herself did not notice it.

She pressed her lips together, and in those golden eyes, the wariness and distance cracked open like a sheet of ice, leaving behind a single narrow fissure.