When Arui returned home, Qin Lie was still nowhere to be found.
If he refused to speak to her, then he was determined not to let her see him at all.
The more she thought about it, the more regret weighed on her heart. She blamed herself for hurting him so deeply.
She patiently embroidered three handkerchiefs, but even as dusk settled over the village, the man’s familiar figure never appeared.
She left his dinner covered on the table and sat waiting for him in the main room.
The Cold Dew festival had passed only a few days earlier, and the nights had already turned bitterly chilly. The main room didn’t even have a proper door, so the cold wind whistled straight inside, numbing her hands and feet.
She had only been sitting there for a short while, yet she could barely endure the cold.
How much worse must it be for Qin Lie, sleeping on those hard wooden benches every single night?
He was such a tall, broad man that the two benches barely accommodated him. Spending every night exposed to the cold like that, even someone with an iron constitution would eventually fall ill.
Arui’s eyes reddened.
The guilt inside her threatened to drown her completely.
Qin Lie had done so much for her.
How could she have the heart to distance herself from him?
…
Qin Lie didn’t return until midnight.
A wild boar rested across his shoulder, and his clothes were so filthy they were almost unrecognizable.
The old house was dark without a single lamp lit. He assumed Arui had already gone to bed.
He removed his outer robe and rinsed the blood and grime from his body.
For the past several days, he’d been suppressing the frustration burning inside him.
Since he couldn’t question Arui directly, he had poured all of that pent-up anger into hunting deep in the mountains.
His body was exhausted.
Yet the emptiness in his heart remained.
He had deliberately avoided her, believing that if he couldn’t see her, he wouldn’t be angry anymore.
Instead, her face haunted him every waking moment.
Her smiling face.
Her tearful face.
Even the memory of her clinging to him while barely conscious.
She looked so gentle, so innocent.
Yet beneath that soft appearance, her heart could be harder than anyone else’s.
His chest rose and fell sharply.
Only after a long while did he slowly release a heavy breath.
He pulled his outer robe from the bamboo pole, draped it over his shoulders, and strode into the main room.
There was no moonlight tonight.
Even so, he could still make out the faint silhouette of someone slumped over the table.
Arui had waited for him for so long that she had eventually fallen asleep with her head resting on her folded arms.
She looked so tiny.
Curled up against the cold, she appeared even more pitiful than usual.
Despite everything…
Despite how many times she had unintentionally hurt him…
Qin Lie still couldn’t stop his heart from softening whenever he looked at her.
He stood frozen in the doorway, his face expressionless.
His feet felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds.
Arui hadn’t been sleeping deeply.
Feeling someone’s gaze on her, she slowly lifted her head.
The moment she recognized Qin Lie standing in the doorway, the drowsiness vanished from her eyes.
Supporting herself against the table, she quickly stood up.
“Brother Lie…”
Her voice was soft, carrying a faint rasp that sounded as though she had been crying.
The foot Qin Lie had been about to turn away with stopped where it was.
She had been the one who wanted to distance herself.
He had respected her wishes.
So why did she sound so wronged now?
In the darkness, neither of them could clearly see the other’s face.
Still, the cold aura surrounding him made Arui both frightened and ashamed.
She twisted the corner of her sleeve nervously before gathering every ounce of courage she had.
“Brother Lie… I… I want to apologize.”
Qin Lie remained silent.
But he didn’t leave.
Afraid she might never get another chance to speak with him, Arui hurriedly blurted out everything weighing on her heart.
“I wasn’t trying to avoid you on purpose.”
“I was only afraid I’d damage your reputation.”
“My reputation?”
The man’s deep voice suddenly shattered the silence like an arrow piercing through the darkness.
Arui instinctively clenched her hands and lowered her head.
Qin Lie had lost his mother as a child.
He lost his father not long afterward.
He had grown up fighting in military camps, surrounded by bloodshed.
People feared the killing intent that naturally clung to him.
Whenever he appeared, villagers often took the long way around just to avoid crossing paths with him.
For Arui to worry about harming his reputation…
It almost sounded absurd.
Heat flooded her ears.
She couldn’t find the words to answer.
The anger Qin Lie had barely managed to suppress surged back to life.
He stepped into the room and stopped directly in front of her.
Fresh from bathing, cool droplets of water still lingered on his skin.
The damp scent carried a faint trace of blood.
Without thinking, Arui took half a step backward.
But the wall was immediately behind her.
There was nowhere left to retreat.
Holding back his anger with visible effort, Qin Lie spoke.
“If you truly think staying here damages my reputation…”
“I’ll move out tomorrow.”
“No!”
Arui looked up in panic.
She instinctively reached out to stop him.
But he had only draped his robe loosely over his shoulders.
Her hand landed directly against his bare abdomen.
Warm.
Firm.
The hard muscles beneath his skin tightened beneath her palm.
She could even feel them twitch beneath her touch.
Her face instantly flushed crimson.
She jerked her hand back as though burned.
“If anyone should leave… it should be me.”
This old house belonged to Qin Lie.
What right did she have to force its owner out?
But her answer only made his expression darken further.
“Where would you go?”
“Your eldest uncle’s house?”
He hadn’t realized that, in only two days, she had already planned where she would live afterward.
The cold air inside the room seemed to grow even heavier.
Arui shivered.
Realizing he had completely misunderstood her, she hurriedly explained.
“I never intended to leave.”
“When I married into this family, you were the only one willing to take me in.”
“I was the foolish one. I kept worrying about what other people would say.”
“But even if I moved out of this house, they’d only find some other excuse to gossip.”
“So… I’d rather stay here openly instead of hiding.”
Ever since marrying Qin Song, she had been destined to live as a widow whom others looked down upon.
People always said that widows attracted endless rumors.
But how many of those disgraceful stories had simply been invented out of thin air?
If she kept allowing herself to be frightened by gossip…
She would only continue to be bullied for the rest of her life.
Although she was only fifteen or sixteen years old, her thoughts had already become far more mature than her age suggested.
Qin Lie frowned.
He caught the most important part of what she had said.
“Who has been talking about you?”
Arui froze for a brief moment.
“No one.”
“I’ve only been overthinking things.”
Qin Lie didn’t reply.
She couldn’t tell whether he believed her or not.
Her heart pounded nervously.
After a long silence, he finally spoke again.
“If you ever hear people saying things like that again…”
“Tell me immediately.”
“I’ll deal with them myself.”
“…All right.”
His voice remained deep and stern.
Yet somehow, hearing those words filled her heart with reassurance.
Cui Zhu had been right.
Qin Lie truly was someone she could rely on.
That night, the misunderstanding between them was finally resolved.
Arui slept more peacefully than she had in days.
Qin Lie, however, lay awake on the wooden benches in the main room.
Restlessness churned inside him.
The place on his abdomen where Arui had touched him still felt strangely tense, and a desire he had long suppressed quietly stirred awake.
He remembered the rumors she feared so much.
What could people possibly say?
Nothing more than the usual gossip, that a young, beautiful widow was living under the same roof as her husband’s elder brother.
A lonely man.
A lonely woman.
People would naturally imagine the worst.
Qin Lie closed his eyes.
Yet the fire within him only burned hotter.
Before long, Arui’s fair, softly curved figure appeared vividly in his mind.
Only a single wall separated them.
It almost felt as though the sweet fragrance that always lingered around her had drifted through the room.
She was so delicate.
So soft.
He wanted nothing more than to gather her tightly into his arms.
The longing he had buried for so long quietly surfaced beneath the cover of night.
Lying there, listening to the steady rhythm of her peaceful breathing from the other side of the wall, he slowly reached a hand to his lower abdomen.
…
When Arui woke the next morning, Qin Lie was still home.
His clothes from the previous night hung from the bamboo pole to dry.
Even his trousers had been washed, water still dripping steadily from the fabric.
“Brother Lie, from now on, let me wash your clothes.”
She walked over without noticing that the man standing with his back to her had suddenly gone rigid.
After a long pause, Qin Lie gave a low grunt of acknowledgment.
Arui took it as agreement.
He owned very few clothes.
Only two sets in total.
The wild boar he had hunted the previous night had left his clothes stained with blood, and two large tears had been ripped into the fabric.
Qin Lie never cared much about appearances.
Still, he couldn’t go around wearing tattered clothing forever.
Arui thought about the money she had recently earned from selling embroidered handkerchiefs.
She decided she would buy enough cloth to sew him a new set of clothes.
After everything Qin Lie had done for her…
It was only right that she repay his kindness.