[Year 9.
After the family reunion dinner, you slipped away alone to the rooftop.
Hands folded behind your head as a makeshift pillow, you gazed quietly up at the moon.]
“Guess who?” A pair of soft little hands suddenly covered Bai Qiong’s eyes.
“Hmm…
who could it be?” Bai Qiong feigned bewilderment, though the corner of his mouth curled upward.
“Could it be…
the legendary Great Queen Liuliu?!”
“Hehehe, congratulations—you got it right!” Jingliu planted her hands on her hips, preening like a proud peacock.
“And since you guessed correctly, the Great Queen Liuliu shall bestow upon you a reward!”
“What kind of reward?” Bai Qiong found his curiosity genuinely piqued.
“A magic spell to make sure you won’t be sad anymore!” Liuliu announced with an air of great mystery.
“Now, you have to cooperate with my treatment, okay?”
“…Mm.” Bai Qiong nodded, somewhat hesitant.
“First, you have to answer me.
Why have you been so unhappy lately?
Uncle and Auntie are both really worried about you.” Liuliu met Bai Qiong’s gaze squarely.
“I…
I’m not unhappy.” Bai Qiong guiltily averted his eyes.
“Look at me.
You’re my child groom, and I’m your child bride.
If something’s wrong, we can’t hide it from each other!” Liuliu’s voice was unyielding.
“I didn’t want to bring my negative feelings to you…”
“But by not telling me anything at all, you’ve already brought your negative feelings to me.” Liuliu’s tone was earnest.
Under the moonlight, her glistening eyes seemed to shimmer.
“We promised we’d be together.
That means you can’t shoulder all these bad feelings by yourself…”
“…Master and Senior Sister…
they’re both gone now…
and Senior Brother went to join them too…” Bai Qiong’s voice trembled.
For the first time in a long while, a faint sob cracked through his words.
Liuliu gazed at him quietly.
She had known all of this for a while now.
But she also knew that these feelings couldn’t stay bottled up inside his heart forever.
Only by letting them out—truly letting them out—could things start to feel better.
She offered no words of comfort.
She simply wrapped her arms around Bai Qiong and held him gently.
Bai Qiong’s head rested on her shoulder, but his tears could no longer be held back.
They streamed down without end.
When he had seen the ash urns of his master and senior sister, he hadn’t cried.
When Senior Brother departed for the front lines, he still hadn’t cried.
He understood that, much of the time, adults didn’t have the right to cry.
And he had always considered himself an adult.
So he couldn’t cry.
But here—in what he believed to be the warmest embrace in the entire world, in front of the girl who had grown up at his side for as long as he could remember—the defenses of his tear ducts were utterly breached.
He didn’t understand.
That bastard of a master—the one who’d lured him in with promises of a home full of rare tomes, when in reality the old man barely knew how to read himself, and aside from a few passable sword manuals, his entire collection consisted of nothing but comic books.
And that Second Senior Sister—the one who dragged him off to raid birds’ nests, who trained for five minutes and slacked off for two hours, yet always pressed down on his head and demanded he show her more respect.
And Senior Brother—the one who cared for him so deeply.
Whenever he and Senior Sister stirred up trouble, Senior Brother was always the one who cleaned up their mess.
Those days felt as vivid as if they’d happened just yesterday.
But…
but…
how had it come to this?
How could all that remain of them be nothing more than cold ash urns…
He was barely nine years old.
But the time he’d spent with his master and martial siblings already accounted for nearly half his life.
He had long since come to see them as his own family…
[Liuliu pulled out her handkerchief and gently dabbed at the corners of your eyes.
Her touch was feather-light, as though she were polishing the most precious antique porcelain.]
“There now, there now, Qiong.
No more tears.” Liuliu imitated the tone of an adult.
“All the tears have flown away now, so there’s no more being sad, okay?”
“I…
I wasn’t crying!” Bai Qiong declared stubbornly.
“I just—just got some sand in my eyes, that’s all!”
Damn it!
I’m supposed to be an adult!
And I just got comforted by Liuliu!
What if she thinks I’m too weak now and doesn’t like me anymore?!
Unease crept into Bai Qiong’s heart.
But reality proved he’d been overthinking.
“Fine, fine.
It wasn’t tears—it was sand.” You better not hide things from me anymore when something’s wrong, got it?!”
Liuliu put on her fiercest expression, but combined with the pair of tiny tiger teeth peeking out, Bai Qiong found it utterly impossible to be intimidated.
Instead, all he could think was—how can she possibly be this cute?!
“Oh, right!
I also have a gift for you~”
Liuliu’s expression turned mysterious, and her little hand slipped into her round, bulging pocket.
Bai Qiong’s attention was instantly captured.
Liuliu pulled out two small wooden carvings from her pocket.
One was in Bai Qiong’s likeness, and the other was, naturally, her own.
Both little figures were carved with astonishing lifelikeness—at least eighty percent true to their current appearances.
“Well?!
Amazing, right?” Liuliu’s little face might as well have had “Praise me!
Praise me!” written all over it.
“Wow!
Liuliu, that’s seriously impressive!” Bai Qiong’s praise came straight from the heart.
Achieving this level of craftsmanship meant she must have poured an incredible amount of hard work into it.
“Hehe, of course!
That old carving I gave you before—you actually lost it!
But it can’t be helped, so I made you two new ones.”
The thought that Bai Qiong had lost the carving she’d given him still stoked a little irritation in her.
As for how she knew?
She’d searched both his house and hers, then combed through the luggage he’d brought back with him.
None of the searches had turned it up.
Bai Qiong blinked.
“How do you know I lost it?”
“That’s because—” Liuliu froze mid-sentence.
She’d nearly blurted out that she’d ransacked both their houses, but she caught herself just in time.
A trace of guilt crept onto her face.
Seizing the opening, Bai Qiong naturally took the opportunity to vigorously ruffle her hair.
Yep.
Still the best.
“B-but you still lost it, and that was wrong of you!
I kept the one you gave me perfectly safe!” Liuliu’s face was flushed now—whether from embarrassment or irritation, it was hard to tell.
“I didn’t lose it.” Bai Qiong’s expression turned a bit helpless as he reached into his own pocket and pulled out the little wooden carving.
Though calling it a “wood carving” sounded elaborate, it was actually quite small—about the size of two fingers.
That was precisely why he’d been carrying it with him everywhere.
“Uu~”
Liuliu’s face turned even redder.
Staring at the awkward, lumpy little carving, she seemed to see a vision of her past self—the one who had so confidently handed this very carving to Bai Qiong.
Her face grew redder still.
In a flash, she snatched the carving back, stuffed it into her own pocket, and shoved the two she had made into Bai Qiong’s hands.
“That old one…
I’m taking it back now…
These two new ones are for you.”
Bai Qiong examined the two carvings in his hands.
His attention was drawn to the characters inscribed on their backs.
“On the back of the little Qiong carving, I wrote ‘Liuliu.’ And on the back of my carving, I wrote ‘Qiong,'” Liuliu explained.
“The grandpa who gave us candy told us—if we do this, we’ll be together forever and ever!”