"Thunk."

Dubian Che opened his eyes, and what appeared was the blue sky roiling with white clouds.

The sky had been clear since the morning, but by noon, some clouds had drifted in from nowhere, yet the sunlight was still remarkably bright.

He looked down slightly, Jiutiao Meijie nestled in his arms.

He gently caressed her delicate little face, picked up a strand of hair, and tickled her neck.

"Uh—" Jiutiao Meijie uttered a slight sound of dissatisfaction.

She twisted her body, pressing closer to Dubian Che, her face entirely buried in his chest.

Dubian Che's right hand was on her slender waist, and he picked up her right hand with his left.

Jiutiao Meijie's five slender fingers, with petal-like light red thin nails, under the warm sun, her hand was almost transparent, delicate and refined.

Dubian Che massaged her hand like one would a baby's, holding it for a while and then letting it go.

After a short while, Jiutiao Meijie woke up.

She glanced at Dubian Che, then closed her eyes again, sleeping in his arms, still letting him play with her hand.

"Stop sleeping," Dubian Che said, his right hand lightly patting her waist, preparing to rise.

Jiutiao Meijie threw a leg over him, forcing Dubian Che to lie back down.

His lips touched her lightly scented hair and he asked, "What's wrong?"

"I haven't been sleeping well lately," Jiutiao Meijie replied with her eyes closed.

Dubian Che remembered this morning, she had indeed woken up very early.

He guessed it was because of Mayi Asuka and Xiaoquan Aonai.

Jiutiao Meijie must have pondered countless times in her heart, thought about it over and over at night.

He didn't ask out loud, just held her tighter.

After a long silence, Jiutiao Meijie's low voice came through:

"After knowing you have lovers, I wanted to kill them directly. It was such a simple thing, but I kept hesitating, worrying that you would leave me."

"I won't," Dubian Che said.

No matter what Jiutiao Meijie had done, even if they hated each other, he wouldn't allow her to leave.

Once they had a relationship, she was his for life.

"One night later, I had a dream where I saw myself sitting in a car, watching you and Kiyono Lin laughing and walking on the road."

Jiutiao Meijie didn't continue.

Why did she have that dream? Because of the underlying gap with Dubian Che? A manifestation of her longstanding worries?

Whether the dream stopped there, what her mood was like when she awoke—she didn't say any of it.

Dubian Che asked nothing more, only held her hand tighter, wrapped his arm around her waist, and said softly yet firmly in her ear:

"Meijie, I will always love you."

"What if what happened in the dream happens?"

"I don't know what happened in the dream, but even if the only intersection in our lives was you glancing at me from the car, and thereafter we had no further contact, like two lines perpendicular to each other, meeting only once in a lifetime, I would follow that line back to the intersection to find you."

"Go on."

"To find you, thousands and thousands of times."

"Say a bit more."

"At that time, you remain a straight line, I become a wavy line, you know an ECG? Up and down, up and down, constantly intersecting with your straight line, until the two lines become one."

"Isn't that like death? What a comparison," Jiutiao Meijie hit Dubian Che on the chest and sat up.

Dubian Che looked at her face returning to life and smiled: "I'd rather die into a line to show how much I love you."

"I love you more."

"No, I love you more."

"If I don't let you support those two women, would you still love me?"

"I would still love you, now even more, twice as much as you love me."

"Isn't the depth of love indescribable?"

"What kind of logic is that? Why can't it be? Who says? I'll kill them tonight."

Jiutiao Meijie's bewitchingly noble eyes fiercely glared at Dubian Che.

The two stood up, left alone on the hillside.

Dubian Che bent down to pick up the painting board from the bushes, the "thunk" they had heard was the sound of the painting board being blown down by the wind.

Jiutiao Meijie pounced on his back.

Dubian Che hooked her legs, straightening up while laughing:

"Be careful jumping like that, you might fall. This is a hillside, you would just roll down."

"Do you want to roll with your sister on the slope covered in wildflowers?" Jiutiao Meijie playfully bit Dubian Che's ear, her voice rippling seductively.

"Sure."

The blue sky, the white cumulus clouds, the slope covered in wildflowers, Dubian Che with a painting board on his back, and Jiutiao Meijie wanting to roll down the ridge, walking along the high mountain ridge.

Returning to the camp, Kiyono Lin and the two ladies were painting the lake from the mountaintop, each of the ladies holding a paintbrush in the right hand and fruit in the left.

Kiyono Lin was laboriously scraping weeds off the painting board with a palette knife.

Their painting board had also been blown down by the wind earlier.

"You arrived just in time!" Mrs. Jiutiao said to the two coming down from the hill, "Take the boat to the middle of the lake and pose for us."

Dubian Che and Jiutiao Meijie got into the boat, rowing toward the center of the lake.

"Your mother really knows how to order people around, just like you."

"Do you dislike that?"

"Like your mother? At this point, I won't lie to you, I'm pretty indifferent about her."

Jiutiao Meijie kicked him.

Once at the center of the lake, Dubian Che let go of the paddles, letting the small boat drift in the lake waters under the blue sky and white clouds.

"Are we just going to sit here foolishly?" Dubian Che asked.

"It was you who told me to get up," Jiutiao Meijie said discontentedly.

"What I mean is, can I kiss you, Meijie, my beautiful princess?"

"Will you really love me forever?"

"I swear," Dubian Che moved closer slowly, saying with his deep, gentle voice, "To the blue sky, to the lake on the mountain, I, Dubian Che, will always love Jiutiao Meijie."

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