You people—you make the [Hero King] sound like a paper crown!

What gives you the right to toss out those three words like feathers!

What do you even know!

What are you, anyway—

Who are you to decide my life!

Me—I just—

Once the first word tore free, the rest spilled like rain.

In a corner of the forest, dawn seeped in like pale milk.

The blonde girl hugged her knees, head tipped back, and poured herself out like a storm breaking.

Ye Weibai just stood there, calm as a still pond; no anger, no heat, not even sorrow.

His eyes, dark and clear as ink on snow, held Aerin’s reflection.

When you see through skin to bone, anger loses weight; a snarl is a flag wolves raise over their ground.

It’s fear, old as fang and claw.

Faced with the unknown, beasts roar; they smell threat, they taste fear; beasts do this, and people do too.

So Ye Weibai knows Aerin is just afraid.

“It’s scary, isn’t it,” he asks, his voice soft as falling ash.

“I—!”

Her voice snaps in half; that softness strikes like thunder.

She wakes as from a dream, realizes what she’s done and said, claps a hand over her mouth like trying to dam a river.

Tears pool fast, then fall like rain.

She trembles head to toe, smothering her sobs like a bird folding broken wings; she feels unworthy to cry.

If anyone has the right to be sad, it should be Master Bai.

But she can’t.

The sobs roll up her throat, touch her lips, then slip through her fingers like quicksilver.

“I—I’m sorry!”

“I, I—s-sorry!”

“Master Bai—sorry, sorry, I’m sorry!”

She doesn’t know how to mend her folly; she can only cry and say sorry, again and again.

Helpless and brittle, like a hedgehog pricked by its own quills.

In Ye Weibai’s eyes, she’s even cuter than her usual sun-bright self.

Thinking that, Ye Weibai reaches out and wipes the tears at her lashes with his thumb, gentle as a breeze.

Then he tastes them, and the girl goes blank with shock, like a deer frozen in moonlight.

“These tears—still fall short,” he says, looking at her.

Such closeness is new to Aerin.

Fear almost corks her crying, like frost sealing a spring.

She tilts up at Master Bai, tears sliding on, and can’t form a word.

“Aerin,” Ye Weibai calls, soft as a bell under snow.

The girl, a pear blossom in rain, startles.

“H-here...”

“Let’s go.”

“Go—go where?”

Ye Weibai doesn’t answer; silence hangs like mist.

Instead, he says, “Aerin, I know what you wanted to say.”

She opens her mouth, desperate to explain, then dims again like a lamp in wind.

Ye Weibai smiles a little, a ripple across a quiet lake.

“It’s okay,” he says, light as drifting dust.

“It’s okay...?” Master Bai’s light tone makes the anger she’d just buried surge back like a tide.

“Yes. It’s okay.” He meets her golden eyes, solemn as stone. “Because everything is your own choice.”

She goes still.

Her heart ripples again, not with anger now, but a sour ache, like biting into unripe fruit.

Is he saying I brought this on myself?

He reads her in a glance, and shakes his head like a branch shedding dew.

“You’re not wrong to think that,” he says, “but I prefer another way to say it—”

[People can only save themselves].

As he speaks, his gaze goes distant, like a traveler looking back after three [Worlds].

“People can only save themselves...?” she murmurs, rolling the words on her tongue like stones warmed by sun.

So few syllables, yet heavy as a mountain.

Not muscle-strong, but a spirit-strong certainty, like a spine of iron.

Aerin feels a wash of envy, even a pinch of jealousy, a green leaf curling in heat.

How sure of yourself must you be to believe in self-salvation.

“Master Bai, I—” she says.

Her lips sting; the bite from before reminds her of her fragility like a nettle’s kiss.

She lowers her eyes.

“I probably can’t do it.”

“That’s not the point,” Ye Weibai says, with a small shake of his head, like wind moving grass.

“And if you could do it alone, why would I be here.”

She blinks, about to ask what it is about, if not can or can’t, her thoughts fluttering like moths.

By then, Master Bai has already held out his hand, palm open like a path.

Aerin reaches without thinking and takes it, fingers threading like ivy.

He gives a light pull, and she rises like a reed from water.

She’s been crouched too long, and the day’s been too long; the moment she stands, she stumbles like a foal.

Master Bai catches her, sure as a tree catching a falling bird.

Gold hair flies and tangles with cropped black; Ye Weibai holds the weak, golden-haired girl like cradling dawn.

Warmth wraps her; color rushes into her pale face like blush on snow.

She opens her mouth, but he speaks first, a hand steady as spring rain.

He wears a rare gentleness, fingers combing her hair, tucking her head against his chest like nesting.

“It’s been hard, hasn’t it,” he says.

After a long hush, the girl lets out a mosquito-soft “Mm,” her nose thick with grievance and ache.

“Then bear with it one last time,” Ye Weibai says. “Let’s head out.”

“Can we stay like this a little longer?”

Her arms tighten a touch; her head hides in his chest; only her ears outside flush red like embers.

Just then, Aerin is a cat clinging to its owner, a little girl begging her father for five more minutes.

She’s soft as cotton candy.

When a girl shows you this softness, how do you refuse.

Ye Weibai hums assent and keeps stroking her hair, a slow tide.

His gaze drifts past the forest canopy, over the high air, to the sun lifting at the far horizon.

You can see it with the naked eye—the gold in that dawn is thickening.

Feeling the girl’s ragged breath smooth out, Ye Weibai sighs inwardly, a leaf falling without sound.

—Is it about to end.

...

...