Chapter 31: What’s It to You?

The next day.

Chi Yujun was startled awake by the sound of Fang Guyuan knocking.

In truth, when Fang Guyuan had been practicing the sword in the courtyard earlier, she had already heard in her sleep the hum of blades tearing the air, and it had driven her through several nightmares in a row.

The most terrifying of them was this: behind her rose mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and the Fang Guyuan standing in front of her changed with a shake of his body, his face becoming her father’s.

Shocked and furious, she drew a sword and cut him down, only to find when the man fell that it truly was her father, while the real Fang Guyuan stood at her side with a cold smile, watching her fall into raving hysteria and gloating as he laid on her once more a restriction she could neither flee nor break.

That suffocating despair was far too real.

Even her dreams had been forcibly occupied by her enemy, and Chi Yujun simply could not understand it.

If days like this went on a while longer, Fang Guyuan might well become a heart demon she could not escape for the rest of her life.

No matter what, she had to advance as soon as possible, and quickly tear this damned food she still could not beat to pieces while it was alive.

“Are you up?”

Chi Yujun sat up too sharply, and heard the food she had in reserve speaking outside her door.

“Not yet.”

As she answered, she sneered at herself in her heart.

She had truly gone mad. For the sake of revenge, she was actually willing to pretend at peaceful coexistence with a villain like Fang Guyuan.

Fang Guyuan was silent a moment, then asked again from outside the door how she had slept last night.

Chi Yujun climbed up from the floor, and a hard, round thing rolled out of her arms.

It still held her body warmth.

It felt warm to the touch, and seemed itself to be giving off heat.

What was this?

She looked at that palm-sized coral pearl, shedding a pink-to-purple gradient of fluorescence, and raised a brow.

Fang Guyuan outside the door had clearly heard the coral pearl roll, and his tone was rather unsteady.

“Last night I saw you sleeping alone under the windowsill. I was afraid you’d catch cold, so I put this coral pearl beside you. Remember to give it back to me when you’re done with it.”

Chi Yujun was very surprised.

This was the first time she had heard Fang Guyuan say he wanted something given back.

Before, whatever he gave her, his attitude had always seemed to be “take it,” “it’s nothing.”

Why was he reminding her to return it this time?

Her gaze went at once to the coral pearl.

Intuition told her this thing was certainly quite important to Fang Guyuan.

A pleasure at the thought of revenge flooded into her mind, and in an instant Chi Yujun wanted to destroy it.

If a thing Fang Guyuan valued were destroyed, what expression would show on his face?

But before she could move, another thought stopped her.

—Endure a little for now. Later, give him the whole great blow directly.

She washed and combed in a slapdash way, took the pearl, went out, and returned it to Fang Guyuan.

Honestly, just now she had glanced at her own face in the mirror in the room, and it had felt a little unreal.

She was clearly a man, yet now both her figure and her looks were a woman’s.

That subtle sense of the picture gave her an illusion that this face was only a disguise for the present, and that the real her was actually hidden inside.

“Xuewu, yesterday… why were you sleeping on the floor again? Is there somewhere the bed is uncomfortable?”

At breakfast, Fang Guyuan asked her.

As he spoke he was drinking the wild-vegetable porridge in a white porcelain bowl.

Chi Yujun had to freeze for a moment before she realized this name was calling her.

In her heart she both found it baffling and thought Fang Guyuan was meddling.

She had always slept like this.

No one had ever asked her this question.

Wasn’t this Fang Guyuan minding far too wide a stretch of business?

“Habit.” She answered very perfunctorily, still calculating in her heart how she was supposed to learn to pretend to love someone.

Fang Guyuan wanted a proper talk with her, and racked his brains for a topic.

“Do you not like sleeping on the bed, or do you simply not like where the bed is placed?”

“Don’t like the place.”

If Chi Yujun was not by the window, she always felt unsafe.

She could not even remember when it had started.

It seemed a very blurred, very distant memory, always expecting that something would appear beside the window.

As for whether it was some person or some thing, she could no longer remember, but this habit of waiting had been kept unconsciously all along.

There was another reason.

She was afraid of places that were too closed in.

By the window, at least, there would be light.

“Sorry. I didn’t think it through. I was careless. Then today I’ll change the bed’s position for you. How about that?”

“What’s the difference between sleeping on a bed and sleeping on the floor? Isn’t it all just sleeping anyway?”

Chi Yujun could not figure out why Fang Guyuan kept clutching this topic and would not let go.

In her eyes this kind of small matter did not matter at all.

“The floor is heavy with damp. Sleeping on the floor, it’s easy to catch cold.”

“Catch cold?”

This was a new phrase whose meaning Chi Yujun had not understood.

“It means getting sick.”

“Oh.” She shook her head. “I won’t.”

“I’m afraid you will. You’re my disciple.”

“What I’m like, what’s it to you?”

The silver-haired woman all but blurted it out, glaring at him, fierce and full of distaste.

The wounding force of the words, paired with that pair of raised green snake eyes, had its aggression pulled to the full.

“……”

Fang Guyuan seemed stabbed by the sentence.

He rarely fell silent and said no more, and only after a good while did he slowly open his mouth, patching it up for himself.

“Sorry. I didn’t know the proper measure. I was only worried that if you got sick, I’d still have to look after you……”

Chi Yujun held a bowl and drank the porridge the way one drank medicinal soup.

Seeing that lonely look on Fang Guyuan, she felt uncomfortable for no reason she knew, as if she had done something wrong.

Fang Guyuan, for his part, was cursing himself in his heart.

His younger brother had been obedient, sensible, and clingy, had liked him beyond measure, and was simply a cozy little padded jacket.

This nominal disciple he had only just taken was clearly a girl.

She disliked him, her temper was not very good, and their relationship could not even be called ordinary.

The two of them could be said to share not a single point of likeness.

Why, then, when he was with her, did he still unconsciously take her for his younger brother……

Could it be he had truly been left alone too long, and needed that kind of comfort in his heart?

Fang Guyuan felt his selfishness was quite shameful.

But on second thought, if his younger brother were here and saw him caring this much about a girl who was a total stranger, he would probably be angry enough to throw a fit on the spot.

The drawback of being clingy was a possessiveness past all bounds, as if he feared that once you came to know other people you would neglect him on that account.

Looked at from this point, perhaps the girl before his eyes, who answered when she felt like it and ignored him when she did not, was a little better.

At least she would not produce opinions about his relations with other people, because she did not care at all.

…Sigh.

Thinking and thinking, Fang Guyuan could not help sighing.

It was only a pity the dead were already gone.

Even if he wanted to let his younger brother cling to him a while longer, he was afraid he could not.

Besides, after a child grew up he would no longer tell his elders everything the way he had when he was small.

If his younger brother were still alive…

He might already have had someone his heart favored, and would no longer cling without letting go the way he had as a child, taking him as his only spiritual pillar.

The two of them were each nursing their own thoughts, silently enjoying breakfast, when a bright, open voice suddenly came from outside the door.

The person was not yet seen.

The voice was heard first.

“Eldest Senior Brother! Look what fine treasure I’ve brought your disciple!”