Ren Wei's blood didn't just run cold. It felt like it was turning to ice, one frozen, terrified drop at a
time.
He had miscalculated. He had, in his arrogant, modern-world confidence, seen a patient. A
puzzle to be solved. He had applied his 21st-century logic to a 16-year-old girl who had survived
this brutal, medieval world by becoming a part of its brutality.
He had thought he was the psychologist. He was just the subject of her art.
"You... what... what did you do to me?" he whispered, his voice finally, finally cracking, not with
therapeutic calm, but with genuine, cold fear.
Li Mei's smile was the most terrible thing he had ever seen. It was pitying.
"I didn't do anything to you, Ren Wei," she said, her voice a soft, loving croon. "I did it for you.
For us. You... you're so good. So pure. Your mind... it... it's not like theirs. It doesn't belong to
this world. It belongs... to me."
She took another step, closing the distance. She was so small, so frail. He was bigger. He was
stronger, now. He could... he could...
"Get away from me," he said, his voice a low growl. He took a step back, hitting the hovel's wall.
"You're... you're a monster. Jiao... Sun Xiao... Zhang... they were just people!"
"They were insects," she said, her voice sharpening, the first hint of cold, hard anger he'd ever
heard. "They were in the way. Jiao hurt you. Sun Xiao distracted you. Zhang... he dared to try
and share... what was ours."
She shook her head, as if disappointed. "Don't you see, my love? I am... I am pruning the
garden. So you, the one beautiful flower, can grow without weeds."
"You're... you're insane," he breathed, his heart hammering.
"I'm in love," she corrected him, as if it were the simplest, most obvious fact in the world.
He couldn't breathe. The hovel was suffocating. He had to get out. He had to run.
He lunged for the door.
He wasn't her partner. He wasn't her friend. He was, as of this moment, a victim, and he had to
escape.
He grabbed the rough, wooden frame of the doorway. He put one foot over the threshold, his
entire being screaming AWAY, AWAY, AWAY.
He took the step.
P-A-I-N.
It was not a physical pain. It was not a headache. It was... worse.
A wave of such profound, soul-crushing, existential despair hit him that his knees buckled. It
was a cold, black, oily tide of loneliness. It was the feeling of being the last human on a dead,
lightless planet. It was a level of suicidal, bottomless grief that made his own mind scream for
oblivion.
It was her pain. The pathological, terrified, all-consuming fear of abandonment she had lived
with her entire life.
And she had just, with a single, mental tug, injected it directly into his soul.
He collapsed. He didn't just fall; he imploded, landing in a heap on the hovel floor, half-in and
half-out of the doorway. He was gasping, sobbing, his hands clutching his head, trying to claw
the feeling out. The world was black. There was no hope. No light. No reason. Only the void.
"No... no... no... make it stop..." he whimpered.
Then, a gentle, cool hand touched the back of his neck.
The black, oily tide receded. Not gone, but... drawn back, like a wave pulling from the shore.
The despair lessened, replaced by a dull, throbbing ache of sorrow.
He looked up, his vision blurry with tears he didn't even know he was shedding.
She was kneeling over him. The cold, terrifying "unveiled" look was gone. She was... she was his Li Mei again. Her face was a mask of perfect, gentle, heartbroken concern.
"Oh, Ren Wei," she whispered, and her voice was his Mei's voice, the soft, shy, trembling one.
"My love. My stupid, wonderful love."
She used the sleeve of her robe to wipe the tears and snot from his face. It was the most tender,
and the most violating, gesture he had ever experienced.
"I told you," she whispered, her voice breaking with a "sadness" that he now knew was a lie. "I
told you, you can't leave."
She leaned down, her lips brushing his ear.
"The... the 'Harmonious Resonance'..." she whispered, as if it were their precious secret. "The
'Silken Heart'... it... it binds us. I... I tied my heart-string to you, Ren Wei. To... to keep you safe.
To keep you anchored."
She pulled back, her dark, "loving" eyes looking into his terrified, broken ones.
"When you... when you try to pull away... it... it hurts, doesn't it?" she breathed, a single
"sympathetic" tear rolling down her cheek.
"It... it feels... like this."
And she gave another, tiny, infinitesimal tug.
The despair crashed back.
He screamed.