Day X —

“A case isn’t complete unless it holds both the wounded and the hand that wielded the blade.”

...

The little girl tilted as she moved, inching closer step by step like a reed under winter wind.

Ye Weibai watched Shaohan haul the full kettle from the kitchen, straining like a sapling in heavy rain. One hand sat in his pocket, the other cupped his teacup, lazy as a sun-warmed cat; he didn’t lift a finger.

Clink.

Metal kissed the glass top of the tea table, a crisp chime like ice tapping porcelain.

His gaze brushed the welts on Shaohan’s palm, flushed red like pomegranate skin. Before he spoke, she flinched like a startled deer, tucked both hands behind her, and turned to leave.

“Don’t rush.”

Ye Weibai called her back and tapped the empty spot beside him, a quiet harbor by his side. “Sit here.”

Shaohan didn’t move; her eyes were cold mountain spring, clear and still, watching him.

A helpless smile rippled through his chest like wind across a lake.

He crooked his mouth, a half-moon. “If we start, we finish the set. Brewing your uncle a cup isn’t hard, right?”

She hesitated for a breath. Ye Weibai said, “Don’t forget I’m handling your enrollment tomorrow. Heaven knows the hoops—maybe a maze of thorns. I ask this small thing, and you feel that wronged?”

Shaohan lifted her head, a swan lifting its neck. “Not wronged.”

She circled the tea table and sat beside him, a full meter of winter air laid between them like frost.

Ye Weibai slanted her a glance. “You brewing for me, or for your own shadow?”

She stiffened, then scooted closer with all the reluctance of a cat in the rain. Even then, a space wide enough for a hefty man yawned between them like a gap in a wall.

He didn’t push. He drained the clear tea in one swallow and lifted the cup, a mute gesture for a refill.

Because of the gap, Shaohan had to stand and bend like a willow over water to pour.

That was fine, except the kettle was a mountain for a thin-limbed child.

She gripped the handle with both hands, body wobbling like a fawn on ice, and edged in. Ye Weibai shot her a look, cool as shade. “Steady. I’m half afraid you’ll baptize my face with boiling rain.”

She said nothing, only wrestled the stream into his cup, drop by careful drop like a thread of silver.

Focused on the pour, she forgot the space. He caught the scent on her damp long hair—shampoo after a cold wash, light as morning mist.

Mm. Not bad, a quiet garden after rain.

To be blunt, aside from height she didn’t take after her father. Bai Rong’s looks were rough-hewn, like cliff rock in dry wind. Shaohan was slim, skin pale and fine; her features were still budding, yet a chill grace was already sprouting. Three thousand strands of ink spilled down her back, and with that cool, clean air around her, silent, she felt like a Tianshan snow lotus.

This girl would grow tall, an icy beauty, moonlight on frost.

Ye Weibai didn’t bother to hide it; he looked her over openly, like weighing a blade’s shine. Shaohan disliked the chore, yet once she took it, her body and brow tightened into focus. Pouring, straining, adding leaves—she poured herself into the task and never once noticed his gaze, a hawk circling still air.

“Hoo.”

After the fourth fill, she sat and slipped out a furtive breath, steam fading against winter glass.

Her hands trembled. She clenched without thinking, and he saw the red blooming across her palm like dusk spreading.

It had to ache. It had to burn, sour and sharp, like vinegar in a cut.

She’d just cleared a houseful of junk—load after load, stones in a river dragging her down. Then a cold shower, then hefting that heavy kettle again and again; even a sturdy boy would be standing on the edge right now, toes over gravel.

But Shaohan stayed silent, lips pressed like a sealed envelope. She tucked her hands behind her back like a ribbon tied too tight.

So damn stubborn, a knot that wouldn’t loosen in rain.

Is it really so hard to admit you can’t, to lay the blade down and breathe?

He met her eyes—still as a mirror-lake, unruffled. In that clarity, stubbornness and defiance stood like twin peaks. Ye Weibai understood: maybe it really was that hard.

When solitude hardens into habit, surrender becomes a word you erase like chalk in a storm.

Is that bad? No, not all the way. Only—

“You’re aiming that strength at the wrong place,” Ye Weibai murmured, voice a low drum under twilight.

“What?” She hadn’t caught it. She turned, gaze lifting like a bird to a branch.

Ding-dong—

Right then, the doorbell rang, a silver ripple running through the room.

...

Shaohan was a strong girl.

Neighbors, relatives, teachers—everyone said so, a chorus rising in a town square like sparrows at dawn.

What is strength? It’s not bowing at a stumble, not retreating at a wall, not yielding to tragedy’s tide.

And they said it because in daily life she matched that shape, and matched it perfectly—other kids fell and wailed like tin drums. She fell, and climbed up in silence, letting blood drizzle over her knees like a thin rain. She gripped the wall and walked to the school infirmary. She found no one there, so she treated herself—washed the wound, dabbed alcohol and iodine, and returned to class as if nothing had happened, a small boat slipping back onto the lake.

She was nine then, already able to care for herself with the precision of a watchmaker.

Faced with a child like that, people tiptoed and tried to cradle her like fragile porcelain warmed by winter sun.

Is that contradictory? No. The word “strong” carries tragedy’s scent; it means the person stands under a storm called misfortune.

Yes—misfortune.

“Shaohan, why didn’t your dad come to the parent meeting?” The question fell like a pebble into a still pond.

“I don’t have a dad.” The answer was flat as ice.

“You’re lying. I saw your dad last vacation.” The denial fluttered like a sparrow, busy and loud.

“I don’t have a dad.” The repetition was a closed door in the rain.

Something like that—frost on a thin window, breath fogging and fading.

Of course Shaohan had a father; only some things went fatally wrong at the start, like a seed planted in salt soil.

Bai Rong jumped from the countryside and fought in the big city, his days hard as dry bread.

In those hard days he met a woman; somehow a child came, a star falling into a dark river.

For Bai Rong and that woman, life was already bitter—so bitter they thought adding Shaohan, this “sugar,” might sweeten the cup.

They weren’t wrong in the thought, but they failed in the doing; they didn’t hold her as sugar, or couldn’t hold it steady.

A child arrives, joy falls from the sky like confetti, but it doesn’t change the lean days; it only pushes the walls closer.

Formula, household registration, tuition—each word a stone dropped in a sack.

Slowly, the sweet heart turned, fermented, twisted.

The child grew day by day, life stayed bitter, and that “sugar” slowly became “poison,” a drop in clean water staining the bowl.

With time, parents should settle into their shape like clay in a kiln. But some people, in some seasons, are born unable to be parents; as time moved, dissatisfaction, regret, and hate didn’t fade—they thickened in the dark like mold behind wallpaper.

Quarrels and cold wars filled the girl’s days, thunderheads rolling across a low sky.

In those screams and shouts, the words that cut deepest into her small heart were—

“You said you’d make it big soon. I followed you and kept the child! You think it’s easy to raise a kid?” The sentence lashed like a whip.

“I’m out there feeding us—think that’s easy?” The reply slammed like a door.

“I said from the start we shouldn’t have a kid!” The regret hissed like steam.

“Wasn’t it you who insisted on keeping it?!” The blame struck like thrown stones.

“If I’d known—if I’d known—” The trail faded into a cliff edge.

I shouldn’t have been born—

Behind a wooden door, the little girl curled under the quilt and hugged her knees, that thought circling like a shadow swallowed by night.