A day off, out shopping, and running into the boss at a flower shop.
Fought with everything she had and could not win: overtime.
Those two lines were a pithy summary and a vivid portrait of what was in Bai Wuxie's heart just then.
"Haah. Master, I'm coming."
Bai Wuxie sighed lightly, resigned, and walked into the flower shop leading Li Yue by her right hand.
Deep-green cat eyes flickered, catching sight of Li Yue.
"And this little miss beside you is?"
Feng Rui asked, a little curious.
"My little sister. She can't see. Don't bully her, Master." Afraid of a misunderstanding, Bai Wuxie hurried to explain.
Put like that, and seeing her disciple so uncommonly possessive.
"Heh. Your master isn't about to steal your people."
Feng Rui gave a light laugh and signalled goodwill.
Since this trip to buy flowers was in a private capacity, she carried nothing that marked her as the Presiding Justice of the Dongdu Judgment Hall.
Her outfit was a detective get-up in her homeland's British style, deerstalker and off-white trench coat, which gave her a brisk, dashing air.
With no Presiding Justice's airs to put on, her manner with Bai Wuxie was naturally easy and unforced.
"My Master! You're so good. Let me help you pick the right memorial flowers!"
Bai Wuxie, delighted beyond hope, bowed and went to Feng Rui's side of her own accord.
"I'll trouble you, then, my disciple."
Watching her own disciple with doting eyes, Feng Rui pointedly ignored the eye-catching Li Yue and laid out her errand and her requirements without hurry:
"I'm here because a few days ago someone who was once a dear friend passed away. While she lived she told me that if she ever left this world, she hoped one or two old friends would lay a few flowers at her grave."
"The difficulty is that she never said what flowers she most wanted, and I can hardly just give her the ones I like. So, Wuxie, any good ideas?"
That said.
With a look of remembrance, Feng Rui fixed Bai Wuxie with expectant eyes and waited patiently for an answer.
"Master, would it be all right to tell me who your friend was, or what colours she liked?"
Bai Wuxie asked for the relevant details in earnest.
"Who she was...... she was in my year, once. More than that I can't say. Her favourite colour was purple, and she liked to wear light colours." Feng Rui answered each point very cooperatively.
"Let me think a moment."
Bai Wuxie thought hard, her face intent.
Just then.
"Mm?"
Someone scratched at her palm.
It was Li Yue, silent all this while, listening to the two of them.
Li Yue moved her fingertip lightly, writing several characters one after another in Bai Wuxie's palm, joined into a sentence:
"Ziling flower, also called purple bell vine."
Her fingertip stopped; Li Yue prompted no further.
Though she wondered privately why Li Yue would suggest this flower, out of trust in her own little sister Bai Wuxie passed the suggestion on to Feng Rui.
Feng Rui had clearly observed Li Yue's small movement, and had thought nothing of it at first. Then, on hearing the choice of ziling flower, she was shaken, and understood.
Her whole expression slipped out of control for an instant, and she stared hard at Li Yue, who looked perfectly calm. In the next breath she had steadied herself, and her gaze went mild again.
Before long.
A fresh cluster of ziling flowers in her arms.
Feng Rui stepped out of the shop, and as she made to leave, glanced back at Bai Wuxie as if idly and said:
"Wuxie, your master will go on ahead. Please thank that little sister of yours from the Nation of Night for me. I won't pursue the matter of her, and you, and Ke Jie any further."
The corner of her mouth lifted into a faint smile.
Her disciple duly instructed, the Presiding Justice left after all, leaving only a solitary back......
"Master actually knows?" Cold sweat sprang out on Bai Wuxie's brow; she had been badly startled.
"No. It might just be a probe." Li Yue put in the reminder, by way of reassurance.
That she had dared suggest memorial flowers to Feng Rui was mostly thanks to some memories she had gained absorbing the Sword Fiend's fiend core the afternoon before.
The memories pointed clearly to a complicated relationship between the Sword Fiend code-named Ziling, Circuit Attendant of the Myriad-Fiend Empire, and Feng Rui, Presiding Justice of the Dongdu Judgment Hall.
Once dear friends, now enemies.
However brilliant the past, with one of them gone, it had all dispersed like smoke.
"Speaking of which, little sis, you still haven't told your big sister how you knew what to pick?" Bai Wuxie, come back to herself, asked with a curious look.
A moment's thought.
Afraid the truth would hurt her big sister.
"......Secret."
Li Yue declined to answer, expressionless.
"Fine. I respect your privacy."
Bai Wuxie tactfully asked no more, took up the several bunches of fresh flowers she had chosen herself, went to the counter to have the assistant wrap them, and settled the bill while she was at it.
A minute later.
"Let's go! Next stop, the clothes shop!"
Bags large and small in her left hand, Li Yue's small hand in her right, Bai Wuxie strode out of the shop brimming with energy.
And then.
She had taken barely a few steps out of the door.
When she froze on the spot.
"M-Master?!!"
Walking straight toward her was... Feng Rui, dressed in sharp contrast to a moment ago, in old-style dress, a chest-high ruqun embroidered with a deep violet orchid pattern.
The surprise left Bai Wuxie dazed.
"Master, didn't you just buy ziling sprigs at this shop? How come you've changed clothes and come back?"
At that.
"Did I? My... disciple. Perhaps you mistook someone else for me. I've come to buy ziling sprigs right now."
The approaching Feng Rui's eyes curved slightly as she asked it with a smile.
Her face and looks were exactly as always, yet every word and movement of this master in front of her gave Bai Wuxie a sense of wrongness she could neither ignore nor describe.
What surprised Bai Wuxie most was the look Feng Rui turned on Li Yue in the next second.
"Mm?"
Those deep-green cat eyes, which should have been so familiar, flared with a brief burst of strange and intense feeling — amusement, resentment, and surprise, joy, and the nostalgia of seeing a thing and thinking of the person.
It lasted only that brief instant, and afterward was as still as a pool of dead water. But Bai Wuxie was certain she had truly seen that eerie scene inside the surprise.
"Um, Master... we'll go to the clothes shop first and buy a few things, then come back and find you." Sensing something was wrong, Bai Wuxie took her leave politely.
"Good. I'll wait for you in the shop. My good disciple, don't you go back on your word." Feng Rui's smile grew more brilliant still, and she reached out and patted Bai Wuxie's right shoulder lightly.
At once.
"!!!"
A shudder ran through her whole body, beyond her control.
Bai Wuxie nodded, her expression stiff.
She could feel it. The master in front of her was absolutely not the same as the one before.
At the critical moment.
"What is it, Big Sis?"
Li Yue wrote in her palm.
"Help."
She did not dare speak it; she wrote it fast.
At that.
Without the slightest hesitation.
Knowing her own Xiao Bai was in trouble, Li Yue at once opened eyes that were sharp and cold.
The Sword Art "Meteor Night-Cleaving" was open.
Normally, in this state she had something close to stopped time, and whatever the situation there was ample time to think, adjust, and respond.
However.
In the instant her eyes opened.
The unexpected happened all the same.
Under the veil of dream-violet and star-blue light, among the things around her that should have crawled and slowed, something alien had mixed in.
"Little princess of the Nation of Night~ Why look at me with eyes like that? Did the priests of the Church of Night never teach Your Highness not to trust too much in those Star-Blessed Eyes, favoured by shadow and moon?"
Feng Rui, no, to put it precisely, the unexpected someone wearing Feng Rui as a disguise, said as much.