READ THE FULL CHAPTER HERE
He pushed open the familiar front door, a small sign on the door with the “Fan” character written on its front greeted him. He traced the sign with his finger.
This place, this house, where their story began.
The door creaked open with the same familiar groan he remembered. Inside lingered the scent of old timber steeped in years of rain and snow, dried medicinal herbs hanging from the rafters, and smoke from countless family meals that had long since faded into the walls.
For one fleeting moment...It felt as though time had simply paused here, patiently waiting for him to come home.
His gaze wandered through the modest room.
There stood the old wooden table where he had first taught Changyu to read. Every unfamiliar character had earned the same determined frown, as though the brushstrokes themselves had conspired to make life difficult for her. She would stare at the page with fierce concentration for all of three minutes before exhaustion won. More often than not, her head would begin to droop in the middle of a stroke, and Xie Zheng would wordlessly slide his palm beneath her cheek, catching her just before she planted her face into the paper.
He had always pretended it was troublesome. Secretly, he had looked forward to it.
The little pig-shaped paperweight still sat on the table.
He picked it up, and memories came flooding back.
During the days before Changyu's court case against her uncle, it had served as the magistrate's gavel while they rehearsed every possible question and answer. Changyu played the indignant plaintiff with astonishing conviction, while Chang Ning insisted on joining every trial, happily changing roles whenever the story demanded it. One moment she was the persuasive witness; the next she was the fearsome executioner, solemnly punishing the guilty with a stick twice her height.
Xie Zheng found himself smiling.
Nothing in the room had changed. Only the people who had once filled it.
It struck him then how quietly a place could preserve happiness long after the laughter itself had fallen silent. Every object remained exactly where it belonged, faithfully guarding memories of ordinary days that no one had realised would one day become precious simply because they could never be lived again.
Near the window lay the neatly rolled bedding.
The sight drew him back to the first night they had shared this room.
Two strangers. One reluctant marriage.
They rehearsed the motion of a wedding night, neither of them had any intention of consummating, all to convince Changyu's greedy aunt and uncle that the marriage had become irreversible.
It had been utterly absurd.
Changyu had blushed so fiercely she could scarcely look him in the eye. He, in turn, had spent the better part of the evening wondering whether there existed a dignified way to pretend to be a husband.
Somehow, between the awkward silences and whispered discussions of how convincing they ought to act, they had stumbled into a rhythm of caring, helping and trusting each other.
The memory should have embarrassed him. Instead, it settled over him like the warmth of fading sunlight—gentle enough to soothe, painful enough to remind him how far away those days had become.
Every corner of the house seemed to remember them. The walls. The floorboards. Even the morning light spilling through the paper windows felt unchanged, as though the time between then and now had merely been a dream.
He stood quietly beside the empty bedroll.
Their marriage had begun as an agreement of convenience, one carefully measured in obligations and boundaries. They had even drawn up a contract, as though affection itself could be negotiated into orderly clauses.
Yet he had broken that contract almost immediately.
Not in word. Not in deed.
Somewhere between teaching her to read, sharing humble meals beneath this roof, and watching her throw herself into trouble with infuriating courage, he had forgotten they were merely pretending.
By the time he realised it...There had been nothing left to pretend.
