Dòu Dòu broke the tension with an exaggerated clap. "Well, breakfast is ruined. Shall we fight next, or save that for after tea?"
I sank back onto the cushions, fists tight, pulse louder than the silence Mingzhu left behind.
Later that day, I slipped into the courtyard to gather herbs, leaving the two of them inside. Their voices carried through the half open doors, sharp against the quiet hum of water outside.
"You can't keep talking to her like that," Dòu Dòu's tone was unusually firm, stripped of its usual playfulness. "She's not just some mortal who wandered too far downstream."
"She is mortal," Mingzhu replied, his voice calm but edged like steel. "Fragile. Temporary. She doesn't belong here."
"Temporary doesn't mean meaningless," Dòu Dòu shot back. "The river chose her. The current itself. You think that happens by chance?"
A pause. I leaned closer to the doorway without meaning to, the pestle still in my hand, heart beating faster.
When Mingzhu spoke again, his voice was quieter, but heavier. "I don't trust the current. It's taken more than it's ever given. If it chose her…" He trailed off, the rest swallowed by silence.
Dòu Dòu exhaled loudly, as though frustrated. "You guard the river but you don't listen to it. Maybe she's the answer to something you're too afraid to see."
The scrape of a chair. Then Mingzhu again, colder now. "Enough. Don't mistake chance for destiny. And don't let her believe it either."
I backed away quickly, pulse thrumming in my ears. Their words tangled inside me, heavy and confusing. The river chose her. What did that mean? Why me?
When I stepped back into the room, they were silent, both staring at opposite walls as though the conversation had never happened.
That night, long after both of them had fallen silent, I lay awake staring at the glassy ceiling. Sleep refused to come. Instead, my thoughts circled back to the moment I had tried hardest to bury.
The boy.
Shen. His small figure racing along the riverbank, his laughter bright before it broke into a scream, the current pulling him under. The way my body had moved before I had even thought, diving after him...then the chaos, the silver light, the world unraveling into water and shadow.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face. Wide-eyed, terrified. And then...nothing.
I pressed the blanket tighter around myself, willing the memory away. It wasn't my responsibility. He wasn't mine to save. And yet, some part of me whispered otherwise: that everything had begun with him, that if I could just understand why…
"No," I muttered into the silence, almost angrily. "It means nothing."
But the river's pull still lingered in my veins, as if mocking me.
By morning, I couldn't bear the weight of it any longer. The walls of Mingzhu's house felt too close, every shadow pressing in. I needed air, noise, anything to drown the echo of that memory.
So when Dòu Dòu joked about taking a walk through the lower markets, I agreed too quickly.
The streets wound like veins of coral, alive with the hum of merchants and the glow of lanterns strung across the water. Voices clashed with the clatter of shells and the shimmer of scales, a world too vivid to be real. For a moment, I almost convinced myself I could forget , that Shen's face was just another dream I could leave behind.
But forgetting never came easily. And the current, I realized, had ways of reminding you what it owned.
The market was a storm of color and sound. Coral-stone stalls lined the winding streets, their tables glittering with shells polished to mirrors, pearls the size of fists, and fish that shimmered like living jewels. Lanterns swayed overhead, spilling shifting ribbons of light across the crowd.
For the first time since falling into this world, I felt almost small in the way children do dwarfed by wonder. I let myself pause at a stall where silver threads glowed faintly in their baskets, finer than spider silk.
"River hair," the merchant boasted, catching my stare. "Woven from the current itself. Stronger than iron if you know how to tie it."
I stepped back quickly, unsettled by the way his gaze lingered too long on me.
Beside me, Dòu Dòu slipped a piece of candied lotus into my hand with a grin. "Sweet makes the noise fade," he said, as if that explained everything. I managed a laugh, though my eyes kept drifting over the crowd.
Because I could feel it someone watching.
At first, it was just a shadow at the edge of my vision. A figure half-hidden near the pearl fountain, vanishing when I turned my head. Then another, further down the street, moving when we moved, stopping when we stopped.
The press of the market grew heavier, the laughter of merchants louder, as though trying to drown out the quiet dread tightening in my chest.
I glanced at Mingzhu. His expression hadn't changed still cold, still distant...but his hand hovered closer to the hilt at his side. He had noticed too.
"Keep walking," he murmured, so low I almost didn't hear.
And suddenly, the market no longer seemed a place of wonder. It felt like a trap, closing in.
The crowd shifted, and for a heartbeat I thought we'd lost the shadows. Then, ahead of us, the street narrowed into an alley where the lantern light dimmed.