Li Yue did not simply, crudely kiss her.
She only moved the stemmed glass of lemon water on Bai Wuxie's side of the table in front of herself.
She closed her eyes gently and smoothed back a strand of silver-white hair with an elegant motion. Pressed her lips together; only then, hesitating no longer, parted her pink lips, aimed at the rim of the glass, and slowly leaned in.
"Mm."
Like a mischievous kitten.
She caught the rim of the glass between her teeth.
Clear, crystalline liquid, still warm, ran down and into the glass drop by drop.
It mixed with the lemon water the glass held, adding a taste of beauty beyond the scent of lemon.
After a good while, feeling the liquid in the glass about to overflow, Li Yue, the roots of her ears burning red, stopped the transfusion with some reluctance and released the rim she had been biting.
As she came away from the rim, a long, thin thread of silver drew out from the corner of her mouth, on the point of breaking and not breaking. The silver thread clung and swayed in mid-air with some tenacity, and only snapped when she closed her mouth.
She felt she had been oddly enthralled, intoxicated, by what she had just done; something inside her had become a stranger, and for that short half minute she had not seemed like herself.
A contradictory pleasure, savoured and resisted at once.
"What's wrong with me......"
She raised a hand and touched her burning cheek.
Puzzled, Li Yue did not forget to push the glass back to Bai Wuxie's side of the table.
However.
The next second.
What she did not know was that Bai Wuxie had in fact come to at the very first moment of the transfusion, and the moment it was done let out a shriek:
"L-little sis!!! What are you doing! Even if we're sisters, you can't......"
At that.
Li Yue's body went rigid, and she froze, at a loss.
"Xiao Bai, please believe me. You've been poisoned. This is the only way to cure it."
She got the explanation out almost in fragments.
Cheeks still flushed with shame carried no conviction at all.
"A-are you speaking now as A-Li, or as Mr. Ke Jie?" Bai Wuxie, red-faced, took the glass into her palm and asked it seriously.
The question mattered a great deal.
If it was Mr. Ke Jie, it was still too soon.
If it was her little sister, it was hard to accept too.
The answer would decide how she treated Li Yue from here on.
"Both."
Li Yue forced down her restless heart and said it evenly.
"Both?!!"
Steam rose faintly from the top of Bai Wuxie's head.
Her whole self turned into a Steam Maiden.
Her cerulean eyes went blurred and wet at once, faintly brimming with tears of excitement, her gaze floating off somewhere.
Sh-she hadn't misheard, had she? Cold, cold Mr. Ke Jie and cold-cute little A-Li were actually treating her to lemon water they had mixed with their own mouths! And they'd even thought up a reason this, this original?
Strange. Why... there seemed to be a violet haze drifting before her eyes, and her mind was going a little blurry.
A thousand thoughts flashed through her head.
Abruptly.
The poison the Half-Fiend "Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden" had planted in her flared and worsened fast.
"Uh-oh. I think I really am poisoned. With love-poison, heh-heh."
Bai Wuxie's eyes dimmed, and she mumbled it with a silly grin.
Without the least awareness that this was not a matter of feelings.
"Thump!"
Her upper body, strengthless, collapsed onto the tabletop.
Only those two sapphires, their light fading, still blinked.
"Forgive me."
Li Yue, sensing something was wrong, said it low.
She opened her eyes again and fixed a worried gaze straight on Bai Wuxie, the poison just taking hold, half dead and half alive.
She understood: this was no longer the time for hesitating and agonising. To save the girl she treasured, even being misunderstood and hated by her was worth it.
At once.
Li Yue stood, walked to Bai Wuxie's side and stopped. Her right hand snatched up the glass holding the lemon water she had mixed with her own mouth, while her left carefully cradled Bai Wuxie's slender, fair neck.
And with the romantic air of a Western fantasy romance, a prince meeting a princess at a banquet and courting her with all his might, she passed every last drop of the liquid in the glass deep into Bai Wuxie's mouth.
That done, Li Yue slowly closed her eyes.
The blue-violet curtain of light dispersed, and time flowed as usual.
"Mm~ A bit sweet."
Bai Wuxie swallowed the liquid in her mouth by reflex, her mind clearing, and delivered the verdict with a faint savouring.
Slow on the uptake, she abruptly registered the awkward closeness and the ambiguous pose she and Li Yue were in, and what the liquid she had just swallowed was — lemon water Li Yue had mixed with her own mouth.
Right now.
Though her brain was a wreck, her admiration and respect for Mr. Ke Jie and her indulgence and doting on little A-Li all mixed together and collided with a hazier feeling.
Bai Wuxie could dimly guess that she really had been poisoned by that fake "Feng Rui" earlier, and that Li Yue had saved her life again. But it was, in the end, too great a shock......
"Th-thank you! Um... I'll be going first! I'm sorry!!!"
Bai Wuxie, cheeks scarlet, tore herself free of Li Yue, snatched up her things and bolted straight out of the room.
"Bang!"
The door slammed open.
Bai Wuxie had fled.
Apart from one incoherent thank-you, she left nothing to the Li Yue standing frozen on the spot.
"Good. That's good. No one will be hurt because of me again."
Li Yue murmured it to herself as though her soul had gone.
Her body tidied the disordered tabletop of its own accord, while inside she turned over and over what she had just seen and heard.
Does Xiao Bai hate me now? Well, of course. Anyone betrayed by a friend they trusted, and having that done to them, could never understand or accept it.
Isn't this exactly what I set out to achieve from the start? To take revenge alone until I destroy myself, and never drag the people I treasure in.
That's right...... this is how it should be. I'm no hero, so as a base avenger, isn't an ending like this only right and proper.
"Mm-hmm~"
The little princess of the Nation of Night gave a cheerful little hum.
"I am not crying just because she ran away!"
She said it brightly to something that wasn't there.
So unlike her usual self that she could barely recognise herself.
"......She's so silly. Buying me flowers, giving me clothes, treating me to breakfast. A hopeless idiot. How could I possibly like an idiot!"
Suddenly.
"Pat. Pat."
A few warm tears slid to the floor.
"Eh? What... why?"
"I don't think I knocked over the glass."
"But the dripping won't stop......"
The little princess of the Nation of Night, forcing her smile, finally realised what she truly felt.
Yes. She was crying, weeping, forcing a smile to cover a broken heart.
"I'm sorry, Ke Jie. I think I've ruined everything. Xiao Bai is gone......"
So apologised the little crying cat with her face all smeared.
She quietly locked the door, crouched alone in the corner with her arms around her knees, buried her head and wept in silence.
She could see nothing. Only a lonely darkness, and the sound of sobbing echoing in the small room.
***
Three hours later.
Dinner eaten alone.
Slowly recovering from the grief.
His face numb and cold, Ke Jie, transformed into the Blade Wielder Blood Demon, carried the holiday's gifts back to the Demon-Purging Bureau.
On his way to his room, Fang Zheng, who had been scolded by Cheng Fang over the misunderstanding, had meant to ask him a thing or two and complain a little, but at the sight of those blood-coloured demon eyes, emptier than ever before, he stopped short and left with a worried look.
After that, back in his room, Ke Jie put his things away, showered and changed, and made his preparations for sleep. Lying on the bed, he could not close his eyes for a long time, and picked up his phone to glance at the chat app's home screen.
His fingertip hovered on and off the avatar of the friend saved as Xiao Bai. After a long while it drifted away; he put the phone down, and drifted slowly into sleep as though each day were a year.
With that, his rare holiday was over.
Ended in a way that was anything but complete.
But.
What he had not noticed.
In the last moment before he put the phone down.
A belated message had come in.
A message from the friend saved as Xiao Bai......