Chapter 17
Yi Nuo~
Ruilin tells me he needs me.
This is a first.
No one in my insignificant life thus far has ever told me such a strange thing, and it stirs something unfamiliar within me, nestling itself there. I should be overjoyed, yet all I feel is a whirlwind of confusion creating chaos in my head… Still this sense of being needed by him unleashes the storm I’ve barely been able to contain. This tempest, like a black hole that devours everything its path might consume me.
Yi Nuo, don’t! My inner voice warns like a siren, but the tug from his lips is like the pulling of a bowstring, but the strings are my very heartstring.
I take a hesitant step forward, closing the gap until only a hair’s breadth separates us. He’s looking down at me with those pleading puppy dog eyes, eyes that beg and plead in a way they shouldn’t. In a way, they have no business doing. Those looks should be reserved for his beloved. The one on his lips and mind each morning when we greet each other and the one he mentions as we exchange our goodnights.
Princess Changying may not be physically present, but her presence lingers with us every day, hour, every minute, down to the ticking of the second. She has never truly left his side, and yet here I, a mere mortal stand before a deity, caught between wanting to step back and wishing I could be the one he loves.
What I desire is impossible. Switching heaven and earth would be simpler—a less daunting task than this. It would be easier to reach up, fingers scraping against the velvet night, to pluck those glittering, distant stars. How can I possibly compete with a perfect princess of the noblest bloodline that lives and breathes within him? It must be my mother’s lustful blood that muddles my mind and makes me feel a yearning in places I didn’t know existed. In places I don’t deserve to feel.
I tiptoe, hoping he’ll stop me before I embarrass myself. I hesitate but not long enough to deem what I’m doing as proper or explain my actions, but all I feel is love, a throbbing desire pooling inside me. A throbbing desire that I don’t understand.
I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed nervously. Ruilin, please stop me.
My arms, warm and yielding, circle his neck; my lips, feather-light, brush his ever so lightly, stealing a kiss—a sinful, sweet kiss. The taste explodes—honeyed and rich, surpassing all my imaginings. It’s intoxicating, like a heady perfume filling my senses. I might be damned, losing myself in this reckless abandon, but to taste this forbidden sweetness even once, to hear my name whispered, a forbidden prayer barely breathed from his lips—it’s worth any damnation.
His body stiffens abruptly, and he gently but firmly pushes me away, as if trying to shake off an enchantment. “I’m sorry, Yi Nuo,” he says, his remorseful voice pulling me back to reality. “You are so lovely, and I feel emotions for you that I shouldn’t, but I can’t betray my own principles or my promises to Princess Changying.”
He doesn’t need to say this; I already know, and it’s this unwavering loyalty that makes Ruilin truly remarkable.
I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze. I’m too vulnerable… too exposed, like a snail without its shell.
My face is on fire, a deep, searing humiliation that should have stopped me from leaning in for that ill-fated, unrequited kiss overcomes me belatedly. “I know. I understand, Ruilin. I really do,” I say, my voice barely escaping as a whisper. “That’s why you must let me go. If I’m truly your best friend, as you claim, don’t make your best friend cry by making her watch you love someone else.”
We saved each other plain and simple. The end. Yet we pretend to be trapped, like gilded birds in a cage, caught in a cycle of debts of our own design or latent desires. “Release me, I release you. Fàng kāi wǒ, wǒ fàng kāi nǐ.” I say so faintly yet it booms deafeningly between us, making him stagger back.
The hushed words, a sibilant whisper like wind through dry leaves, unleash a torrent of grief that steals my breath, leaving me gasping for air that feels thin and brittle. A visceral wave of pain, the collective sorrow of countless heartbroken women echoing those same words, threatens to shatter me. But I stand firm. An unyielding stone, a stubborn fortress built of the same granite rising to protect my bruised heart.
A sudden clarity, like the clearing of a morning fog, like the lifting of a heavy veil, makes me realize this feeling; though overwhelming now, it’s for a girl of my age commonplace, even terribly contrived and basic, yet a profoundly unforgettable.
Ruilin is my first heartbreak.
Ruilin~
I watch her disappear into her room; her figure small but shoulder square, head held high, like a triumphant general leaving the battleground beneath the glow from the jade lanterns until it’s her door staring back at me.
Since she is the victor, there must be a loser… me. The chill of her sudden detachment is so cold, I shiver as she leaves me stranded. She is done fighting, her hands pristine nevertheless, yet the battle rages. Unspoken regrets clamor, muting the thunder of my racing heart to a mere scurrying of mice.
My heart and mind are in a fierce conflict, each trying to dominate the other while every instinct, every fiber of my being is screaming at me to pound on the door to Yi Nuo’s room and her heart that I watched become inaccessible as she raised a protective wall against me.
I thought I understood. I thought I could endure the implications of pushing her away, but logic mocks my nativity the way a man scoffs at a boy who foolishly declares the moon is a gigantic bao.
My eyes burn hot and dry as I think of the hurt and tears Yi Nuo must be shedding in private. A part of me feels relieved she was willing to give up her affections for me. Another part, a significant part feels guilty…regretful for not returning them. I had never considered what Yi Nuo truly meant to me. Now, the question haunts me.
I am torn apart, knowing I have no right to want her, yet desperately wishing I could wrap her in my arms, to pull her close and hold on until this confusion quiets and subsides. I am gripped by fear, longing, and an ache that refuses to let go, yet I remain rooted, shackled by my own conflicting ideals.
The words she spoke, “Fàng kāi wǒ wǒ fàng kāi nǐ” echoes in my mind like a haunting or for me a curse.
I feel the helplessness of every man who has heard those words from the one they loved but couldn’t have, bearing down on me, wrapping me in a suffocating blanket. A blanket woven with the threads of profound regret, forbidden longing and unfathomable heartbreak. Yet I cling to this suffocating blanket nevertheless, the way a child stubbornly clings to his first teddy bear because it was the first, like Yi Nuo.
She is my first heartbreak.
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“Ruilin, get up!” Leyang’s urgent shaking jolts me from a slumber into a state of erratic confusion. Somehow, I had drifted off in the dim corridor, my gaze fixed on Yi Nuo’s door.
A dull ache spreads through my limbs as I stretch, trying to shake off the stiffness. I cut Leyang a sharp glare, silently urging him to lower his voice so as not to disturb Yi Nuo. But his next words freeze me in place, draining the blood from my face and pooling it in my feet.
“Yi Nuo is gone! Lue Lue reported early this morning she sought an audience with the Emperor for a high-stakes chess match, which Yi Nuo won. Her prize was a request: to be sent back to the mortal realm, to a place where you could never find her, and…”
My fingers, icy with dread, grip his coarse wool collar, lifting him a foot off the ground. A jolt of desperation, raw and bright as a lightning strike, floods me. “And what, Leyang?!”
“She asked for water from the River of Oblivion to forget you. The emperor granted her wishes. Ruilin, how will we find her again?”