Chapter 4

Sensing my gaze, Ji Wenmu swiftly covered his neck. I watched him flee in a panic as if his pants were on fire. The memories from my drunken night became clearer and clearer—the scenes vividly playing out before my eyes, the words echoing in my ears, and even the tactile sensation… lingering on my lips.

I touched my lips. Despite the summer heat, a wave of coldness washed over me. I unconsciously muttered, “I’m doomed.”

The longing I had hidden for fifteen years was entirely spilled out by a few jars of wine.

How would he look at me in the future? He clearly had someone else in his heart. How was I supposed to face him?

Moving my hand from my lips to my forehead, I closed my eyes, wishing I could shrink into a turtle shell.

A passing maid came to check on me. I waved her off, stood up, and swayed slightly on my feet.

Before I even sorted out my own thoughts, my feet were already carrying me in the direction Ji Wenmu had fled.

The moment he saw me, his feet shifted, ready to run again. I stepped in front to cut him off. “Wait a moment. I have something to say to you.”

He tensed up like a fully drawn bowstring, looking at me warily. “Say what?”

I opened my mouth, only to find I had lost my voice and couldn’t produce a sound.

“If you’re not going to speak, I’m leaving.”

I grabbed his sleeve and forced the words out.

“I remembered… the day I was drunk… I was highly… highly offensive…”

Fighting the urge to run away, I forced myself to stare at his face, though my eyes kept uncontrollably darting to the teeth mark. The shape was neat and full—I did have nice teeth.

I quickly spat on myself in my heart; getting to the main point was more important.

“If you mind being bitten,” I rolled up my sleeve, “you can bite back.”

He reacted as if facing a mortal enemy. Before I even untied the string on my cuff, his hand clamped down, sliding from my elbow to my wrist. His movement was so swift that by the time I realized it, my forearm only felt a burning sensation from his grip.

“Watch yourself! You’re a girl, how can you expose your arms in broad daylight?”

I froze for a second. His phrase “I actually forgot you were even a woman” echoed in my mind.

A slight joy bubbled up from the bottom of my heart. “Didn’t you treat me like a man?”

“I already got kicked by you, how would I dare? Wouldn’t you kick me until I’m crippled?”

That little bit of joy vanished without a trace.

The timidity that had hovered in my heart for years surfaced again. The confession of “like” that had just barely formed in my mouth was almost suppressed once more.

“There’s one more thing. The things I said when I was drunk.”

My voice was very quiet, but he reacted as if stung, shivering violently.

“You had too much to drink, I…”

“It was true.”

I raised my eyes and looked straight into his, leaving him no chance to avoid me.

“Me liking you, that is true.”

Learning martial arts was for you, going to the battlefield was for you, truly liking you—none of it was drunken nonsense.

I had practically become your shadow, but was it because a shadow is beneath your feet that you could never see it?

I spoke this simple sentence as casually as the clouds and wind, but only I knew how fast my heart was racing.

Ji Wenmu’s reaction was even more unnatural than mine. He spent his days exposed to the sun and wind, lacking the fair skin of pampered young masters. Yet even so, I could see he had flushed from his face all the way down to his neck, looking everywhere—the sky, the ground—except at me.

After waiting a long time without a response, the faint flame in my heart flickered in the wind and was soon blown out. I began trying to figure out how to smooth things over.

Tell him it was drunken nonsense?
Laugh at him for actually taking it seriously?
Tell him, how could I possibly like him?

Any of these would be better than just standing here awkwardly.

These words kept swirling in my head, but I couldn’t utter a single syllable. I just watched him.

After hesitating for a long time, Ji Wenmu avoided my gaze, looking extremely lost. “I only ever treated you… as a brother…”

It was an outcome I had expected.

I told myself I could pick it up and put it down. I wanted to pat his shoulder to show I didn’t mind, but my hand trembled uncontrollably, so I could only hide it behind my back.

“I know.”

I raised my foot and lightly tapped the tip of his shoe. “Then we’re still brothers. Don’t worry. Since you have no feelings for me, let’s just forget it. Don’t feel pressured.”

Keeping it inside for fifteen years was precisely because I feared we wouldn’t even be able to be brothers in the end. But one drinking session ruined fifteen years of effort.