As they looked back, a convoy of horse-drawn carriages came thundering past at full gallop, cutting off the view between Toono Takaki and Shinohara Akari.
"I didn't expect a callback like this," Li Yao murmured with a knowing smile.
"Mm," Bai Qing agreed, smiling as she nodded.
Back in the chapter with the cherry blossoms, Shinohara Akari had been the first one to dash across the merchant road — and their line of sight had been blocked by a racing convoy just the same. But after that convoy passed, Shinohara Akari had been there, waiting for him on the other side.
They kept reading.
This time, the convoy was extraordinarily long. The thunder of hooves and the grinding of wheels against stone filled the air from all directions.
The wind kicked up by the horses and carriages as they hurtled past sent the cherry blossom petals swirling high and far.
Toono Takaki's hair was tossed into disarray by the gust.
Then another convoy came racing from the opposite direction.
At last, the carriages were gone.
But the other side of the merchant road was empty.
For just a moment, Toono Takaki's face broke into an expression that could shatter a heart — and then, quietly, it softened into a smile of release.
He turned, and walked away.
He left behind only the cherry blossoms, drifting down at five centimeters per second, falling and falling without end at that crossroads on the merchant road.
End of Book.
"What? End of book? Just like that? Where's the twist?"
Li Yao stared at the page in bewilderment — but the tears were already beyond her control. They burst from her eyes and streamed down her face, and before long she had dissolved into a sobbing, sniffling wreck.
Bai Qing held up considerably better — she had, after all, survived several of Fang Qiu's books by now — but even she couldn't stop two quiet tears from tracing their way down her cheeks.
What Fang Qiu had written wasn't a novel at all. It was a slice of life.
The kind of life many people lived.
Quiet. And full of regret.
Bai Qing wiped her eyes and let out a long, slow breath. She was just about to offer Li Yao some comfort when she noticed the slightly older senior editor sitting on her other side — crying even harder than the two of them put together.
Tears streaming. Face crumpling. The full works.
"Are you alright, Senior?" Bai Qing couldn't help but ask.
"I'm fine. Just... remembering some old things."
The senior editor pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her face — but the moment she wiped the tears away, a fresh wave came pouring down.
The other editors nearby watched this scene unfold and quietly swallowed.
They had all read Your Name. The ending carried a faint, bittersweet ache to it — but the main characters had found each other in the end. There was even a sense of openness to it, a door left ajar. And from the way Fang Qiu had written it, the two of them had clearly ended up together.
So they had been curious about Fang Qiu's new book too.
But watching this scene unfold before them, they felt something rather like relief.
Thank goodness. When Li Yao had come to find them earlier, they had still had work to finish — otherwise they would have sat down and read along.
They knew full well what Fang Qiu was capable of.
Not long ago, Sword and Fairy had reduced countless readers to tears. Even without having read it themselves, the sheer event of its release had measurably affected their moods.
Not because of Sword and Fairy's terrifying sales figures — impressive as those were, those numbers didn't put a single extra Mora in their pockets, nor take one away.
As for concerns about market space being squeezed — Liyue's novel market was not so fragile that one Fang Qiu could crowd it out.
No. What had genuinely soured their moods was this: a great many authors had also bought and read Sword and Fairy.
And when the editors went around pushing for manuscripts, those authors had used reading Sword and Fairy as their reason for being in a terrible headspace and needing a break.
When the editors refused to believe them, one author simply picked up Sword and Fairy, flipped to a page, let the feeling settle in — and burst into tears on the spot.
So there was really nothing to be done.
The sheer destructive power of Fang Qiu was difficult to overstate.
So much for turning over a new leaf. Looking at the three of them — Bai Qing and the others, crying their eyes out — it was abundantly clear that Fang Qiu had not, in fact, reformed at all. She was simply as incorrigible as ever.
"Achoo."
At that very moment, Fang Qiu — currently helping Qiqi pick out a small finch at the flower and bird market — let out an involuntary sneeze.
"Don't tell me I'm allergic to birds," she muttered, eyeing the round little yellow finch sitting plump and self-satisfied in the cage before her, a small furrow forming between her brows.
"Shopkeeper, how much is this small finch?"
"Oho, what a fine eye you have, miss! This here is a small finch brought back all the way from Jueyun Karst — you could say it's the finest of the finest among small finches."
"The finest of the finest among small finches? What does that mean?"
"It's still a small finch."
"So what's the difference?"
"It costs more."
Faced with a shopkeeper of such disarming honesty that she didn't quite know what to say, Fang Qiu lapsed into silence.
After the shopkeeper launched into a lengthy explanation about how ordinary eyes simply couldn't detect the difference, Fang Qiu selected a perfectly ordinary small finch instead.
Three hundred Mora.
It looked no different in quality from the six-hundred-Mora Jueyun Karst-registered one. If anything, it looked considerably smarter.
This prompted a quiet reflection in Fang Qiu's heart: this was probably what Liyue called an intelligence tax.
Back in her past life, any product with a celebrity endorsement would sell for noticeably more than an equivalent item.
Here in Liyue, anything with even the faintest connection to the Adepti carried a hefty price premium.
Take, for example: teapots made from rare Jueyun Karst timber, porcelain cups crafted from Jueyun Karst ore, Qingxin flower plants transplanted from Jueyun Karst. All of them cost significantly more than their ordinary counterparts.
But those were all still vaguely understandable.
A while ago, she had seen someone selling Jueyun Karst natural spring water.
Well, she could live with that — there had been people in her past life who made a living just transporting water around, after all.
But recently, when she had gone out to buy firewood, she had come across someone selling Jueyun Karst firewood.
Priced a full third higher than regular firewood — and of inferior quality, according to Xiangling, who said that Jueyun Karst firewood produced an absolutely extraordinary amount of smoke when burned.
After paying her three hundred Mora, Fang Qiu picked up the birdcage and set off in the direction of Bubu Pharmacy. She had only taken a few steps when she heard someone behind her calling out a price.
She glanced back — and watched someone buy that six-hundred-Mora finch without a second thought.
That was what it meant to have money, she supposed.
Fang Qiu sighed inwardly and walked on toward Bubu Pharmacy, stopping along the way to buy Qiqi two coconuts.
When she arrived at Bubu Pharmacy, Qiqi was in the middle of a conversation with a patient.
"Little miss Qiqi, could you prepare some Zixuan for me?"
"Some what?"
"Zixuan."
"Zi... what?"
"Zixuan!"
Hearing the exchange between Qiqi and the patient, Fang Qiu couldn't suppress a laugh.
She stepped forward, scanned the rows of labeled drawers, and pointed to one of them. "That one right there."
"Yes, yes, exactly that one!" The patient nodded rapidly, visibly relieved.
With Fang Qiu's guidance, Qiqi quickly prepared the medicine for the patient.
After the patient left, Qiqi tilted her head and looked up at Fang Qiu. The corners of her small mouth curved upward ever so slightly.
"You came to see Qiqi?" she said. "Qiqi is very happy.
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