"Elder Sister's husband?"

A small girl blinked her eyes, wondering if she had heard wrong.

"Elder Sister, you're married?" A child of about five, nose running freely, said in surprise.

"You dunce! Elder Sister got married right here in our village! You just don't remember!" The eldest among them rapped her companion on the head. The sniffly child yelped and clutched their head, looking close to tears.

"Congratulations, Elder Sister!" A boy of about ten offered his sincerest felicitations.

"Elder Sister's husband is very handsome!" A little girl with braided pigtails hopped forward cheerfully, blinking up at him. "Big Brother, what is your name?"

"My name is Xiao Mo," Xiao Mo said, smiling at the small faces around him.

"Hello, Brother Xiao!"

"Brother Xiao, you must treat our Elder Sister Ruxue well. Elder Sister Ruxue is so kind!"

"That's right, Brother Xiao! If you are ever unkind to Elder Sister Ruxue, we will be very angry!"

The children clustered around Xiao Mo, one voice after another, each determined to ensure their Elder Sister Ruxue would never suffer any unhappiness.

"Do not worry. Brother Xiao treats me very well," Yan Ruxue said, raising a hand to her lips with a gentle laugh, and ruffled their small heads one by one.

"Did husband hear all of that?" She looked at Xiao Mo with a smile. "Husband must always be good to me. If husband is ever unkind to me in the future, these little ones will take my side, you know."

"I heard." Xiao Mo nodded with a smile. "How could I ever dare be unkind to my wife?"

"Good that husband understands." Yan Ruxue laughed softly, then turned to the children. "Today Elder Sister must walk around with this big brother for a while, so she cannot stay with you. Another day, Elder Sister will come and play with all of you properly. Does that sound all right?"

"Ah, is that so... very well then..."

"Goodbye, Elder Sister Ruxue... goodbye, Brother Xiao..."

"Goodbye!"

The children were a little downcast, but did not cling, and scampered off obediently. Before they left, Yan Ruxue divided the remaining red dates among them.

"It seems Ruxue is very much loved here," Xiao Mo said, watching the woman beside him as the children departed.

"I suppose so." Yan Ruxue smiled warmly, watching the small figures running away into the distance.

"The people in this village are honest and good-natured. When a villager runs into difficulty and it is within my ability to help, I help. It costs very little, after all."

"Though it seems they do not know Ruxue's true identity?" Xiao Mo asked, puzzled.

"Mm... how to put it..." Yan Ruxue thought a moment before answering.

"The villagers here know only that I am called Ruxue. They do not know my family name, do not know that I am the daughter of the current Chancellor, and certainly do not know that I am Your Majesty's consort. In their eyes, I am perhaps simply a young lady from a well-to-do family in the city."

"When this concubine was married here, they took it to be the daughter of a wealthy city family holding her wedding at an ancestral home. Many came to watch, but no one thought much more of it."

"In any case, it is better this way." Yan Ruxue rose on her tiptoes, plucked a single withered leaf from a branch, blew the snow from its surface, and turned it between her fingers as she walked.

"If they knew my true identity, they would likely not dare speak freely with me anymore, and what they thought and felt would also be different."

"Of course... there may already be those who have guessed. There are not many women named Ruxue in the capital, especially from families of means. It is possible some of the villagers have quietly worked it out but simply kept it to themselves."

"Because some things, once spoken aloud, change in nature."

"That is true." Xiao Mo nodded in agreement. Watching the children in the distance engaged in a lively snowball fight, he pulled his sleeves together. "Sometimes, not knowing is not such a bad thing."

"But only sometimes." Yan Ruxue smiled. "Your Majesty, shall we walk on?"

"Of course."

Xiao Mo answered, and continued into the deeper parts of the village alongside Yan Ruxue.

The village was neither large nor particularly small. The footprints of Xiao Mo and Yan Ruxue pressed side by side through the white snow, passing household after household, leaving their marks one after another in the winter stillness.

The further he walked into the village, the stronger the feeling of familiarity grew within Xiao Mo. It was as though he had lived here once, and for a very long time at that. As though this village held many people who had once mattered greatly to him. But every time he tried to follow that feeling deeper, something seemed to stand in the way, blocking his path.

"Your Majesty, we have arrived. There, that is the courtyard this concubine purchased."

Just as Xiao Mo's thoughts were growing hazier and more distant, Yan Ruxue stopped in her tracks, extended her slender white hand, and pointed toward what lay ahead, speaking softly.

Xiao Mo came back to himself and looked up.

Before him sat a courtyard of the simplest kind imaginable, set into a corner of the village. A low wooden fence ran around its perimeter, the kind that served only to mark a boundary or pen in a few chickens and ducks. A single firm push would send it toppling. It could not have deterred any thief.

Though, looking at how worn and old the place appeared, Xiao Mo doubted any thief would bother.

Within the courtyard stood a stone table and stone stools that had been there for who knew how many years, their surfaces showing the gentle weathering of long age. A bamboo pole for hanging laundry rested against the wall in one corner, and an old stone mill used for grinding bean curd stood nearby, its surface layered with drifts of fallen snow.

Nothing more than a small, weathered little courtyard. Nothing more than the most ordinary yard beneath the heavens and yet the moment Xiao Mo laid eyes on it, his heart began to beat faster, unbidden.

"Xiao Mo, I am going to cook for you today! I am very good at it!"

A small girl stood with her hands on her hips, lifting her delicate chin, full of self-satisfaction.

"Xiao Mo, Xiao Mo! Something terrible has happened. The kitchen is on fire!"

A young girl came running out from the kitchen, her face smudged with ash, her appearance rather bedraggled, yet somehow entirely endearing.

"Is your idea of cooking just throwing a live chicken straight into the pot?"

When the scholar went to put out the fire, he found a hen in the pot, still fully feathered, and could not decide whether to laugh or despair.

"Oh?" The young girl's lovely peach-blossom eyes blinked with genuine bewilderment. "Isn't that how you cook things?"

"Xiao Mo, the women in the village, Aunty Wang and the others, all say I am well-suited for bearing children, that once I have a baby, you and the child will never go hungry. What does that mean?"

After supper one evening, the young girl lifted her head, asking with earnest curiosity.

Hearing the question, the scholar choked on his food and fell into a fit of coughing.

"Little one, do not go asking such things," the scholar said, rapping gently on her head.

The young girl pouted, muttering under her breath, "I am not little. We are the same age, you and I."

"Xiao Mo, are you going to marry the county magistrate's daughter? I do not want you to marry anyone else."

The young girl stood squarely before Xiao Mo, arms folded across her chest, her eyes fixed upon him with complete seriousness.

"Foolish girl." The scholar flicked her lightly on the forehead.

"If you do not want me to marry her, then I will not marry her."

"Xiao Mo, what does it mean to like someone? What does it feel like to like a person?"

One evening, the young girl and the scholar sat together in the courtyard, heads tilted back, gazing up at the stars yet the young girl's eyes seemed to hold a brightness more dazzling than all the stars spread across the sky.

Hearing the question, the scholar said nothing. He only turned and looked quietly at the young girl beside him.

"Xiao Mo, I think the fireflies tonight are rather beautiful."

"Xiao Mo, I think the moon tonight is very full."

"Xiao Mo, I think there are so many stars tonight."

"Xiao Mo, I think Aunty Wang seemed especially happy today."

"Xiao Mo, I think Little Qing does not like green peppers."

"Xiao Mo, I think the big black ox in the village has grown lazy."

Walking down from the hills, the young girl spoke one small observation after another, not one of them of any great consequence, and the scholar did not find it tiresome in the slightest, answering each one with patient care.

"Xiao Mo..."

In the night's dimness, the young girl lifted her head, looked at the scholar walking beside her, and held the edge of his sleeve tightly in her small hand.

"I think... I have come to like you."

"Xiao Mo, the road to the capital is long and far. I have made you two garments. Wear them well and do not let yourself catch cold."

"And take these two jars of honey as well. They are not worth much, but they are given with a true heart. When you call upon Master Zhang, you must not arrive empty-handed."

"Also, do not go to the pleasure houses."

"If the examinations do not go well, do not lose heart. There is always another year."

"Little Qing and I will be here... waiting for you to come back..."

At the mouth of a cave in She Mountain, hidden behind a great boulder, the entrance covered in purple sun grass and blue waterfall flowers, a scholar with silver at his temples stood before the cave, the clean wind stirring his yellowed, much-mended blue robe.

How long the scholar had stood before that cave, no one could say.

He raised his head and looked at the great stone before him.

Behind it lay the one he loved most dearly.

"Brother Xiao... truly, there is no need to wait any longer..." a young girl in a blue skirt said, unable to bear it.

The old scholar shook his head. "Before, it was always she who waited for me."

"Now it is my turn to wait for her."

Before the courtyard gate of Stone Bridge Village, image after image surfaced in Xiao Mo's mind.

These images were no longer blurred and indistinct as dreams. No longer merely a vague sense of familiarity. The clay that had sealed away his memories seemed in this moment to have been cleared entirely away, and clear spring water began to well up slowly, rising from within.

A woman took shape in Xiao Mo's heart.

She wore a plain white gown.

Her every movement was clumsy and unhurried, and yet carried with it a whole-hearted earnestness.

Her every expression, every smile, was full of mischief and beauty.

Everything was so clear...

"Your Majesty?" Yan Ruxue turned and saw the distant look upon Xiao Mo's face, asking with quiet concern, "Is Your Majesty feeling unwell?"

"No, it is nothing. Perhaps my spirit has grown somewhat fatigued from the steady rhythm of cultivation and court affairs of late."

Xiao Mo lifted his head and looked at the woman before him and in the moment he looked at her, a tenderness passed through the depths of his eyes that he could not have put into words.

"Let this concubine take a look."

Before Xiao Mo could refuse, Yan Ruxue's slender fingers wrapped gently around his wrist, and her spiritual energy moved carefully into his body. After examining him twice over, she found nothing amiss, and only then let out a quiet breath of relief.

"Your Majesty... one cannot rush cultivation. There is no benefit in forcing the pace. Slow and steady is the way, and haste leads nowhere. Not to mention Your Majesty handles court affairs every day as well. These next days, Your Majesty must truly rest properly. This concubine will be watching."

Yan Ruxue released Xiao Mo's wrist, her tone carrying the faintest hint of fond exasperation, though beneath it lay something that felt rather like endless, gentle indulgence.

"I know. I will be mindful of it." Xiao Mo nodded with a smile. "Though Ruxue, you need not call me Your Majesty. We are outside the palace now."

"Then what shall I call you? Master Xiao? Husband?" Yan Ruxue said with a smile.

"Whichever Ruxue finds most natural." Xiao Mo looked into the eyes of the woman before him, as though he had not truly seen her in a very, very long time.

"Then... husband?" Yan Ruxue thought a moment, then tilted her head up, her long lashes framing the gentle flutter of her peach-blossom eyes, like a butterfly aloft in the winter snow.

"Of course." Xiao Mo answered with a warm smile.

"You really are something, husband..."

Yan Ruxue looked at him with a playful, feigned reproach.

"Then, husband, shall we go inside? This concubine will make a meal for husband later, and let husband judge this concubine's cooking for himself."

"Of course." Xiao Mo nodded.

Yan Ruxue turned and walked step by step toward the courtyard.

Watching the graceful line of her retreating figure, Xiao Mo felt his thoughts grow hazier still. The silhouette of a young girl seemed to be slowly, gradually merging with the soft outline of the woman walking before him.

"Ruxue."

Xiao Mo called out softly.

"Mm?" The woman turned, looking at him. "What is it, husband?"

"Nothing... it is nothing." Xiao Mo shook his head.

"Husband is behaving very strangely today." Yan Ruxue raised a hand to her lips with a gentle laugh. "Though, husband, do you know that long ago, this courtyard actually had a story attached to it?"

"Oh? What story?" Xiao Mo asked, his tone carrying a note of what sounded like curiosity.

"How to put it... in truth it is a rather worn and ordinary story, the kind found in any common tale." Yan Ruxue looked at the courtyard, a glimmer of distant recollection passing through her eyes.

"Once upon a time, this courtyard was home to a young boy and a young girl."

"But the girl was not of the human race. She was a small white snake whom the boy had once rescued on a hillside."

"The white snake, wishing to repay his kindness, cultivated diligently until she at last took human form, then went to find the boy."

"Did the boy not discover her true identity?" Xiao Mo asked with a smile.

"He did not. The boy was rather foolish, and never noticed at all." A light, fond amusement ran through the woman's voice as she continued.

"They lived together, and grew up together, and in time came to cherish one another."

"The boy passed the county examination, then the prefectural examination, and finally, grown into a young man, prepared to travel to the capital to sit for the imperial examinations."

"The scholar told her that when he returned, he would marry her."

Listening to Ruxue's words, the fingers hidden beneath Xiao Mo's sleeve pressed tight, and a shadow of quiet sorrow passed through his eyes.

"And did he... did he come back in the end?" Xiao Mo steadied the current of his heart, looked up, and asked with a calm smile.

Xiao Mo's words fell, and after them came only the wordless wind, moving softly through the hems of their robes and lifting the threads of her hair.

"Mm..."

After a long silence, the woman raised her head and looked deeply into his eyes.

"He... came back."

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