Chapter 74 — Two

Zhang Qingyue looked at her. There was gladness on Bili's face, but it could not quite hide the pallor and weariness beneath it—these past days, he guessed, she must have fretted herself sick over him. All at once his heart ran hot, and the words broke from him: "What could I possibly worry about? Can things get any worse for me than they already are?"

Bili was taken aback. She gave him a look, and Zhang Qingyue smiled faintly and bitterly. "It doesn't matter. No one will come now. Stay and talk with me a while."

Bili's face lit up, and she nodded. "All right."

But once the words were out, the two of them simply stared at each other, and neither could think of a thing to say; the air between them cooled all at once, and a faint awkwardness crept in.

After a long pause Bili scolded him, half in pique, "You idiot—say something!"

Zhang Qingyue scratched his head, but his mind was a perfect blank; he truly did not know what to say to this beautiful girl. By chance his eye drifted sideways and caught sight of a thick black-jointed bamboo stalk lying fallen not far off, rotted through and brought down by the years. He went over to it and mumbled, "Sit down, please."

Bili burst into a giggle, blooming like a flower, lovely beyond compare.

She went over and was about to sit when Zhang Qingyue suddenly caught hold of her. "Wait."

Bili blinked. "What is it?"

Zhang Qingyue bent down and scrubbed hard at the bamboo with his sleeve until a patch of it came clean, then straightened, and without looking at her, head lowered, said, "Now you can sit."

The smile left Bili's face. Her lips moved faintly, and her bright eyes rested only on Zhang Qingyue's figure; after a good while she slowly sat down, then gave him a tug. "You sit too."

Zhang Qingyue flushed. "I—I'll just sit on the ground..."

But Bili pulled hard and drew him down beside her onto the bamboo. "When I tell you to sit, you sit! What do you want to sit on the ground for?"

Zhang Qingyue gave an embarrassed laugh. A faint, elusive fragrance drifted from beside him, stealing in at his nostrils and settling deep in his heart. He could not help turning to look at her, and found Bili gazing back at him, her eyes like water, gentle beyond all telling.

Never before—not even in those days when the two of them had been trapped together in the Blood-Dripping Cave beneath the Dead Spirit Abyss—had Zhang Qingyue felt so close to her. After a time he said suddenly, "Bili."

Bili smiled. "What is it?"

Zhang Qingyue gazed at her. "Why are you so good to me?"

Bili was silent a moment, then slowly let her eyes fall to the earth before her; a faint bewilderment seemed to drift across her face as well. "Yes," she said. "Why am I so good to you?"

Above their heads the bamboo leaves stirred softly in the mountain wind, as though they too were murmuring some secret.

"My family, and the things that happened before—you know about all of it now, don't you?" Bili said at last, quietly, mournfully.

Zhang Qingyue nodded slightly. "Yes."

Bili went on slowly, "My mother was gone before I was old enough to remember her, and my father was always caught up in the great affairs of the Holy Sect; he had little time for me. And everyone around me—they looked at my father's face, and so they always greeted me with smiles and flattered me to my every whim."

Zhang Qingyue was silent a moment. "Your father does care about you, truly."

Bili nodded. "I know. But I never understood it before—not until I met you."

She gazed at Zhang Qingyue and said quietly, "Xiaofan, I will never in my life forget those days in the Blood-Dripping Cave."

Her voice, as she spoke now, seemed to come from very far away. "So it turns out that even in the darkness—even when I thought I was about to die—I could find someone to lean on."

Zhang Qingyue's heart was moved, but he did not know what to say.

A hand like polished jade reached over; Bili gently took his hand, and from her soft skin a faint warmth flowed into him.

From her bosom she drew a handkerchief and gently wiped away the smudges left on his sleeve from when he had cleaned the bamboo for her.

"From the time I was small, I don't know how many people curried favor with me, how many rare treasures they gave me—and yet..." She lifted her head and looked into Zhang Qingyue's eyes, and said softly, "Even if all the treasures under heaven were laid before me, not one of them would be worth this sleeve of yours, that you dirtied wiping the bamboo for me."

In that moment, every sound in the world fell away.

There was only the gentle light in this beautiful girl's eyes, gathered about him.

How many years from now, when you look back on the past, will you still remember that once, long ago, someone whispered the secrets of her heart to you?

Those words, feverish with the innocence of youth—do you still remember them?

Like a vow carved deep into the heart, that neither death nor forgetting can undo!

Did you open your arms and gather the one you loved into your embrace?

At some unknowable moment, there in that gentle stillness, he opened his arms and held the beautiful girl beside him close.