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Li Wei whirls into her life like petals twirling through the spring breeze. There’s no other way Yuan Ying can describe her – she’s impossibly light, gentle and bright, with a smile for everyone even when everything goes wrong. How can she have so much understanding and acceptance for someone married to her lover? Yuan Ying wants to be deeply jealous of the way she bends gracefully to the blows of life, and she is, but more than that it feels like raging grief. Li Wei’s parents loved her unconditionally, she learns. Loudly, with open arms. Maybe that’s the reason so much love overflows from Li Wei onto the people around her. Yuan Ying wishes, sometimes, that she could have Li Wei’s easy manner, her grins, her seemingly endless positivity. That if only she could reach out and grasp, she would stop feeling like there are too many jagged edges rattling in her chest, that if only she could let go–
Li Wei cuts her kite away. Yuan Ying stands there in shock, watching the kite disappear from her hands into the blue sky. For a moment it feels like a slight, like Li Wei is saying that if she can’t do it well she shouldn’t do it at all, until she turns around and is hit by Li Wei’s blinding grin. Abruptly her spirits lift as if to follow the kite in flight, leaving a sweet taste melting on her tongue. But, ah. Li Wei is the sun, and Yin Zheng is the moon. And Yuan Ying? Her feet belong on steady ground; her feet which will climb mountains. There are things she has wanted to do her entire life, things she must do, and none of those things involve staying here with Li Wei and Yin Zheng.
But, for a brief period of time, she entertains the thought – what if she stays? What if she’s happy here? The three of them work well together, and it’s not as big a sacrifice as she thought it would be.
Until the feast with the foreign state officials comes, and Li Wei is ordered to be left behind. There can only be one furen in a household, and Yuan Ying knows she is just an imposter in Li Wei’s place. Even if their statuses were switched, with Li Wei the furen and Yuan Ying the ce-furen, at the end of the day Li Wei does not want to share her lover, let alone herself, and Yuan Ying must keep that in mind.
There is more that Yuan Ying wants to achieve. She must keep that in mind.
So she learns to keep her feelings deep down. There is an addition to her nightly routine, meditation before she sleeps, to sort through her affection for Li Wei and straighten her thoughts out, laying them side by side in a small chest she keeps in the back of her mind. But Li Wei gets increasingly comfortable in her presence, and soon enough Yuan Ying realises that meditation is not lessening the effect Li Wei has on her. In bed she tosses and turns to the echo of Li Wei’s voice in her ears, and when she finally falls asleep it is to the sight of Li Wei’s lips curved in a sweet smile, calling her Yuan Ying.
The touches become more frequent, more familiar. They somehow get into the habit of holding each other’s hands, and Li Wei keeps pressing herself to Yuan Ying – in public, at home, and anywhere in between. In the carriage Li Wei leans her head on her shoulder, and in these close quarters, sheltered by wood, Yuan Ying feels so, so drunk on her proximity. Li Wei is just so warm and right there. Yuan Ying wonders if she can hear how quickly her heart beats for her.
And for the first time in her life, Yuan Ying gives up. Idly the thought crosses her mind that maybe, just maybe, repeated exposure will desensitise her to Li Wei and her everything. She hopes it doesn’t.
She doesn’t let her feelings get in the way of their friendship; Li Wei deserves better than that. Li Wei deserves only the best, and everything she wants – Yin Zheng’s blatant and explicit love, and everyone’s respect and adoration. Yuan Ying’s presence here is temporary, and she is Li Wei’s mentor and friend. She cannot do all the things for Li Wei that Yin Zheng can. All she can do is steal touches and time, and offer her unconditional support.
Though, she eventually realises that there are some things she can do. She stands outside Li Wei’s room, hearing her delight at the qingtuan Yuan Ying asked Chef Liu to make for her, and her decision to let them all have midnight snacks, and thinks – maybe she cannot do anything in the light like Yin Zheng can. But she can still do something real. Li Wei spends so much of her love warming the people around her; Yuan Ying and Yin Zheng can give her warmth in return.
This is another thing that becomes a habit, though only on her part – standing outside Li Wei’s room and never walking in. At times she feels like a voyeur, looking into Li Wei and Yin Zheng’s bubble of happiness that spills out onto the blue stone around her feet. She’s watching them babysit Changle when it flashes across her mind – her in Yin Zheng’s place, looking at Li Wei’s smiling face across a sleeping babe. She strikes the thought away before it can take root. This is what she wants. This is what she can never want.
It doesn’t matter, in the end. She will be leaving soon. When she brings the matter up with Yin Zheng she lets the words slip through her mouth – accidentally or not, she doesn’t quite know. I would take Li Wei away with me if you were not good for her. Yin Zheng takes it in stride, a soft yet nearly unreadable look in his eyes. He replies to the issue of their arranged divorce by saying that he would not break a promise, and Yuan Ying wonders if he also means his promise to Li Wei, to love and have only her, wonders how much of her own heart he has noticed in the past months despite her efforts to conceal it, wonders if he is reassuring or warning her, or both.
At least they are aligned in wanting to bring Li Wei happiness. And Yin Zheng is who Li Wei wants.
Yuan Ying isn’t sure how Li Wei figures out she is about to leave, but she does. Yuan Ying sees her rush into the empty restaurant, wisps of hair flying out from her bun, cheeks flushed, the only thing out of place amid all the cutlery and furniture that Yuan Ying has straightened out excessively. Wet eyes lock onto hers, and she has to hold back a flinch. Li Wei is looking at her like her heart is breaking, and it’s so unfair. What else can Yuan Ying do, stay? Who will benefit?
So Yuan Ying turns away and tries to untangle herself from their web of family with reasons that have gathered dust, but one line from Li Wei slams her back into her own hurting self.
But I don’t want to let you go.
It’s so unfair. But when has life ever been fair to Yuan Ying.
Another habit forms from then on, if something that happens only thrice can be called that. Maybe she starts doing it because of Li Wei’s clear reluctance to part from her, or maybe Yuan Ying has never really given up on the hope that she can somehow have Li Wei.
She says it to Yin Zheng, but the words are for Li Wei to hear – if Yin Zheng doesn’t treat her well, Yuan Ying will come for him, and take Li Wei away. It is a joke, though they can all probably tell that it’s not. But at the very least, Li Wei now knows that she has another place to go, another person to rely on.
Before they part, Yuan Ying brings up something that’s been on her mind. Everyone keeps saying that Li Wei is becoming like her. Her mannerisms, her skills, the tone of her voice. A childish part of her is quietly yet absurdly delighted that Li Wei now carries part of Yuan Ying with her, but more than that Yuan Ying wonders, is this really what Li Wei wants?
So she asks. And what Li Wei says in response is right, even though she doesn’t point it out directly. There is a certain way you have to conduct yourself if you want people to listen to you, if you want to protect the ones you love and help others. Yuan Ying would know; she’s been cultivating it for that purpose her entire life.
There is more that Yuan Ying wants to do, things she has been working towards that she will not give up on.
The last she sees of Li Wei, she is leaning out of the carriage window and looking back towards Yuan Ying, slowly growing smaller as she is driven away, slowly growing blurrier even as Yuan Ying tries her best to hold back her tears.
The sun reflects off the gilded edges of the wood and turning wheels of the departing carriage. For just a second, Yuan Ying’s vision fills with glittering light.