After her long talk with Hua Qing, Zhi Wei thought about it for a long time. The memory of Hua Qing under the fall sunlight as she said those words keep coming back to her mind. Zhi Wei suddenly feels that only a woman as brave and free as Hua Qing would dare to swear by the heaven that her love is deeper than the ocean and taller than the mountain, a love that surpasses all. A sudden feeling of envy mixed with disappointment bubbled up inside her, Zhi Wei laments that Yan Huai Shi is sure luckier than most. Lost in thought during the silence of the late night, a sleepless Zhi Wei wonders where Ning Yi’s army is now. South Sea is Ming Nan’s neighbor, he must be traveling day and night. She thought of his blindness. Because of her, he had delayed his original plan of traveling to Ming Nan so that even now his eyesight has not yet recovered. To lead an army under his condition, how difficult it must be. The next moment she is plagued by the thought of what if he can’t find the right medicine. His treatment was delayed for so long, what if he loses his eyesight for good? Even though he doesn’t have to personally go on the battlefield but it could still be dangerous…what happens then?  Abruptly breaking out in a cold sweat, Zhi Wei knocks on her wall in order to have a talk with Gu Nan Yi so she could ask that famous physician to go help Ning Yi. 

Master Gu floats down and his first action was to reach out a hand to touch her forehead. Utterly surprised, Zhi Wei looks up at Master Gu with amazement–Holy moly! Master Gu initiated physical contact with people! Completely oblivious to her stare, Master Gu has broken too many rules in the last bit that a simple forehead touch does not even register in his sensibilities. Repeatedly putting his hand on Zhi Wei’s face, Master Gu wonders if she is still on the warm side and touches his own face to compare. In order to touch his own face, Master Gu’s veil obviously had to be raised a bit. Staring blankly at the half-exposed countenance, Zhi Wei could feel a lump caught in her throat, silently cursing there is no light in the room making it easy to be blinded by the flash of beauty in the darkness but then again, it might be even worse with lights on- the clearer she can see the worse off it will be for her. To avoid completely forgetting everything she had wanted to say, Zhi Wei promptly averts her eyes. Master Gu seemingly has come to a conclusion that Zhi Wei’s slight warmth due to her wild racing thoughts must be an indication of a fever, he reaches out a hand to drag the blanket over, throws it on the bed’s footstep and lays down on it in a very practiced manner. 

Zhi Wei suffers yet another shock–what is he doing? She has no knowledge of Gu Nan Yi sleeping by her during the time she was sick. Master Gu himself wouldn’t have told her either. Zhi Wei waited for a while but no sound came so she finally leans down to take a peek only to see Master Gu has fallen asleep holding the blanket. His long body awkwardly curled up on the short footrest, obviously sleeping quite uncomfortably. Going by Master Gu’s high requirement for comfort, it is difficult to imagine that he can fall asleep like that. However, judging by the familiarity of his pose, it is obviously not a habit that could be created in a day or two. Leaning against the side of the bed, Zhi Wei stares at Gu Nan Yi and remembered how Ning Yi had rushed over to the side of the bed in the middle of the night. Her little heart quivered as her fingers dug into the bed causing little slivers of wood falling on top of Master Gu’s face covering.  Gu Nan Yi opens his eyes, looks up at Zhi Wei who is leaning over the side of the bed and instantly remembers how he used to wait for her to wake up. He had even thought of the thing he would say in case she wakes up. 

“Thank you.”

Zhi Wei’s hand that had been supporting her against the bed slips causing her to almost fall off— there have been too many surprises today. Someone who has never understood what gratitude means nor would ever apologize is suddenly telling her “thank you” in a rather strange time. What’s going on with him right now?  

In the long endless nights while Zhi Wei was at death’s door, Master Gu had pondered long and hard as he was sleeping on her bed’s footstep what he should say when she wakes up then leans over the bed to look at him. Say “You woke up?” Pointless drivel. Say “Did you sleep well?” Still pointless drivel. Say “Are you okay now?” That would be the world’s most pointless drivel. He has never uttered a single word of pointless drivel in his life. If he is going to say something then it would be something that must be said. 

In those long endless nights, as each moment slips by, he keeps waiting and waiting but it doesn’t seem like she would wake up. That sort of long and almost hopeless waiting, that sort of grave expression accompanied by helpless sighs, he astonishingly slowly comes to understand that foreign heavy feeling weighing on his heart is what others describe as emotions of fear and anxiety. The understanding wasn’t clear and might even be hazy but for the first time in his world that has been blank in the last ten plus years it finally happened. Just as the lightness in his heart when she smilingly cracks walnuts for him, just as the gentle warmth in him when she talked about playing the flute to find him, just as the tug in his heart when she grins happily to get him to change into women’s clothes…he understands now, that’s the happiness and joy they talked about back when he was young. The heaviness that came with the thought of her dying, that’s fear. The coldness in his heart when he thought about her really being gone from the world, that’s sadness…during those days, he finally understood. Perhaps it is still a far stretch from true understanding. Perhaps it is still too complicated for him to comprehend but finally, in what should’ve been fated to be a bleak life, color has slowly seeped into his world. All of these are what Zhi Wei gifted him, no one else could’ve accomplished it. 

He abruptly understood that the only thing he should say to her is a “thank you.” Thank her for existing, thank her for her patience, thank her for cracking open his world that was tightly shut and allowed him to see a bit of the vibrant world. He doesn’t feel that his existence before is bad but he feels that understanding some of these things is better. Because if he understand, then he will be more like Feng Zhi Wei, like all those people who said he is different. This way, he won’t be like last time, he won’t be clueless when Feng Zhi Wei is dying. So he should tell her, “thank you.” Gu Nan Yi feels that if something needs to be said then it must be said as soon as possible. He almost didn’t have a chance to say it so naturally, he can’t miss the chance now. Feeling like he has accomplished what has been weighing on him, Master Gu promptly goes back to sleep, leaving a poor certain someone wide awake from shock. Glaring at him from above, Zhi Wei fumes that he could just go right back to sleep after throwing out a bomb like that. 

Zhi Wei reaches out a hand to ruffle up Master Gu’s hair, “Hey, hey, don’t sleep, get up to explain this to me clearly.” 

Master Gu opens his pure clear eyes, “What?” He has already forgotten. 

Speechless, Zhi Wei looks and him and explains “You thanked me.” 

“Oh,” Master Gu thought about it for a moment, patted where his heart is and slowly says, “When you almost died, it was really uncomfortable here. Thank you for letting me understand what it means to be sad.” 

Thank you for letting me understand what it means to be sad. Zhi Wei stares at the man who is holding a hand to his heart and in all seriousness thanking her for letting him “understand sadness.” Biting down on her lips, Zhi Wei’s eyes slowly reddened slightly. Under the moonlight that has crept into the room, Gu Nan Yi looks serene and peaceful but only Feng Zhi Wei knows that his serene tranquility is not what the world would assume to be beautiful and warm. He has always lived in a world that is cold and loud, living a frigid existence. Living in the deep frozen depth, a world devoid of everything. Even the world’s simplest joy and the most agonizing pain all seems to be worlds apart from him. Only those who have grown up in such an existence would know the true meaning of his seemingly ridiculous words. 

Staring at him, Zhi Wei could feel the dull pain bubbling up in her heart– after knowing him all this time, she cracked opened his world yet the first things she taught him were sadness and pain. 

“No.” After a long moment, Zhi Wei gingerly leans down against the side of the bed and whispers a vow to the unmoving porcelain-like figure in the moonlight: “I will not let you just understand sadness, no, not just those. I want you to walk out of the cage that is trapping you. I want you to see this world and not just the small narrow neck of land right in front of you. I want you to not always have to have eight pieces of meat in your bowl. I want you to learn to look at me properly. I want you to know how to cry, to laugh, to bicker, to argue…to know how to love.” 


All text copyright @ www.Ninja-Reflection.com

Related Posts