[Episode 32, from Ning’s POV]
Xie Wei tossed and turned in a fevered nightmare, and murmured, “Mother, Dingfei will go. Dingfei will go.”
Ning had known for months that the man who called himself Xie Wei had another identity, and that his real identity must be associated with the Yan family. However, the hair stood up on the back of her neck at Xie Wei’s words. If he was Xue Dingfei, his hatred of the Xues, his desire to protect the Yans, and his decision to stand by Shen Lang’s side made sense. No wonder he was so damaged. Next to the bonfire of Xue Dingfei’s problems, Ning’s own problems looked like a torch. She felt deeply ashamed that she hadn’t realised how very hard his life had been.
Ning’s stomach clenched as she heard a yowl and saw that a bobcat was entering the cave. She knew exactly how much Xie Wei hated and feared cats. She’d seen how he jumped, when she tossed a cloth at him and meowed. Unlike the cloth, the cat entering the cave was no joke.
She looked back and saw with relief that Xie Wei was still sleeping, albeit fretfully. She flailed her arms at the cat and realised with dismay that it had been followed by others, and that it was totally unafraid of her arm-waving. She picked up stones from the cave floor. Unfortunately, just as Yan Lin had always scornfully asserted, she threw like a girl, and the stones sailed into the cats in a useless fashion. Then her mind went back to bonfires. Wild animals were scared of fire. She picked up a burning branch from the fire and swiped at the cats.
“Ning’er!” gasped Mr Xie, behind her.
“Don’t worry, Sir,” Ning said, as she swung at the cats with the flaming log. One jumped at her, raking down her arm with its claws, and she hit it off.
Then a cat leapt towards Mr Xie. His face was filled with a terrible fear, and he cowered. Ning couldn’t let him be terrorised or hurt by bobcats. She hit the cat with the flaming log, and cinders and sparks went flying everywhere. The scalded cats yowled and retreated. She slumped with relief, dropped the burning branch back into the fire, and spared a moment to be glad that she hadn’t set either herself or Mr Xie on fire.
Meanwhile, Mr Xie had managed to stand and leaned against the wall. Ning ran to him. “Sir! Are you okay?”
Too late, Ning noticed that Mr Xie had a strange look in his eyes; the falling snow and the cold air outside had triggered his paranoid delusions. He seized her by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall. He put one hand around her throat, then looked at her face closely, his breath hot. “Why? I’m so bad. Why are you so soft-hearted?”
Ning braced herself. In his previous two episodes of paranoia, Xie Wei had threatened to stab her. She knew very well that he wanted to kill her. This time, did he mean to strangle her? She wondered if she could bite him, like she had at Yanshuang Pavilion, to return him to his senses.
Mr Xie said, in an odd menacing voice, “You should have left! You shouldn’t have stayed here! It’s too late for you to leave now. Too late.”
Instead of strangling her, to Ning’s utter shock, Xie Wei leaned forward, still holding her neck, locked his lips onto hers, then thrust his tongue into her mouth. He had pushed her right up against the wall, and she realised, from the way his body was pressing up against hers, that he was aroused. Ning hit him on the shoulder. How could he do this? It was madness; he’d never liked her. No one should like her. In the other life, he’d been the death of her.
Unfortunately, Mr Xie seemed to be oblivious to her pathetic thumps on his shoulder and kept kissing her, more and more deeply. She hoped that he wasn’t going to force himself on her in a delusional state, mistakenly thinking she was some other woman. She knew how it felt to be forced, from her previous life, after Yan Lin had gone crazy when the Xues slaughtered his family.
There was a difference, though. Ning had never wanted to kiss Yan Lin like this, in this life or her other life. She began to cry, as she realised that she wished that Mr Xie really did feel this passion when he was sane. She liked being desired by him, madly, possessively. Warmth flooded between her legs, as he pressed against her. She knew she was wrong and bad to want him. Nonetheless, she kissed him back, even as she hit him. She was mad too.
Eventually, Ning pulled away from him, whimpering, and stopped hitting his shoulder. They stared at each other and gasped.
Mr Xie’s eyes were still strange and bright, and his expression was manic. He didn’t loosen his grip on her neck, and his tone was still quietly menacing. “And then? Then… you’ll escape. You’ll escape to a place where I can’t find you, right?”
Ning was afraid he might kill her if she ran. She set her feet and tried to keep her tone calm. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving. I’m staying right here.”
“You’re lying.” Mr Xie caressed her face, his hands hot on her cheeks. “Why do you like Zhang Zhe? He doesn’t understand you at all. Only I can understand you!”
Ning stared at him. Maybe he did understand who she was on some level, if he was talking about Zhang Zhe?
Meanwhile Mr Xie said, “I gave you a chance to leave, but you gave up on it.” His words suggested that by staying here, she’d agreed to whatever lunacy was currently plaguing him. Ning just had to hope he recalled his fundamental decency. Tears welled in her eyes.
Mr Xie let go of her neck, and put both hands up to her face, to roughly wipe off the tears. “It’s okay. You’re meant to be mine.”
Then he leaned forward, evidently intending to kiss her again. Ning had to stop him; this wasn’t the real Xie Wei, whom she both admired and feared. A man like him couldn’t – and shouldn’t – want to kiss her. She couldn’t bear feeling that forbidden desire again; it hurt too much. She turned her face away. “You’re delusional and unwell! Stop talking!”
Mr Xie’s eyes blazed, and he screamed, “I’m very sober!” His voice rang in the enclosed space of the cave.
Tears ran down Ning’s face. What could she say or do to bring Xie Wei to his senses, to remind him that he should hate her? In her head, she heard her mother’s voice say how ungrateful and ill-mannered she was. He was entirely right to hate her.
Abruptly, Mr Xie’s expression changed, and he suddenly looked like a lost child. She remembered that he’d also switched abruptly like this, during his previous episode of madness, when she was fourteen. He grabbed her shoulders and looked at her pleadingly. “Jiang Xuening. Won’t you die here, with me?”
Ning was suddenly furious with him, both because he’d uncovered her physical desire for him, and because he wanted to die. She’d already died once. She didn’t want their lives to end here, in this stupid cave. She glared at him, and brought up the life-debt, in an effort to get him to see sense, given that he seemed to have at least some inkling of who she was. “No! No, I won’t! I saved you back then. Your life is not yours. It’smine! You don’t have my approval to die, nor will I die with you!”
Mr Xie looked confused. “Didn’t you say you were living a life of no peace and no freedom? Why won’t you agree?”
“There’s no freedom in life! You’re right, I worry about too many people and things in the world. Maybe I really can’t be free. It’s because people need me and love me that I can’t bear to die. Not only that, I want to live. I want to live for as long as I can!” Ning cried, as she thought of how she had watched her life seep away on the floor of Ning’an Palace in the other life. “Xie Ju’an, this goes for you too. Don’t be a coward! Don’t make me look down on you!”
She realised at that moment that she’d crossed an invisible line. She would no longer be able to call Xie Wei “Teacher” or “Sir” or “Mr Xie”. She now thought of him as Xie Ju’an, the man with whom she’d shared this moment of inappropriate and crazed intimacy.
Xie Wei stared at her and let his arms drop. He drooped. Then to her dismay, he lost focus on her altogether, and began to wander around the cave, looking lost. Ning followed, worried that she’d been too harsh on him. She always made things worse, with her cruelty. Meanwhile Xie Wei looked around, flinching and putting up his arms, and she followed his gaze. There was nothing there, but Ning felt her arms prickle, as if phantoms were really watching them. He didn’t respond to her urging to go back to the fire.
At that moment, she wondered if she’d been sent back not only to help Yan Lin and the others, but to change the fate of this broken, brilliant man. He was far more complex than she’d realised in her previous life. She knew all too well that Xie Wei could be a very bad person, as bad as she herself had been. Unexpectedly, she remembered the cinnabar brush he’d used to choose which palace officials should be executed, in the other life. She put her hand to her neck, recalling how the other Xie Wei had painted a line across her throat. And then, she felt another shameful flush of desire, as she recalled how he’d pulled her to him, with a look of lust on his face, and caressed her wrists. She really had to stop this madness: both his and hers.
This memory led Ning to remember that she’d seen Xie Wei take medication in the past life, just before she’d tried to seduce him, but also in this life, when he’d behaved in a crazy way at Shangqing Temple. For all she knew, he’d taken it before Hui’s wedding, and his declaration of affection had been produced by medicinal madness, not his true desire. Maybe the first step was to confiscate that medication Xie Wei was taking, to restore his sanity. Lyu Xian had said it was making his madness worse and killing him. She couldn’t bear it if Xie Wei died.
Fortunately, at that moment, the grey light of dawn seeped into the cave, and she could see that it had stopped snowing. She hoped they’d made it through the night.
Suddenly, Xie Wei sank to the ground of the cave, and drew his legs up, cowering against the wall. “Yes. What’s wrong with dying here?” he murmured.
Ning’s heart broke; she wondered if he’d done this when Lord Pingnan attacked the capital. She thought back to the first time she’d witnessed his delusions. He’d ranted that time that his life was as worthy as an emperor’s, and that it was unfair to be treated as lesser. She wondered what terrible things Xue Dingfei had been told, to encourage him to offer himself up in lieu of Shen Lang, and what ghosts he had been seeing in the cave. She knelt by him and tried to comfort him.
As the sun rose higher, Xie Wei’s breathing became increasingly shallow. At least she wasn’t going to freeze if she stayed next to him—he was still burning up—but Ning became worried, after their conversation earlier in the evening, that he was literally willing himself to die. She shook him and touched his forehead. “Xie Wei! Stay alive. Live! Live!”
Xie Wei gasped deeply, then his eyes opened, and he stared at Ning. She tried to dart away, in case he intended to grab her again, but he caught her arm. Then he stared at the blood on her sleeve and the scratch on her arm. To her relief, his expression and his eyes seemed normal. She observed gruffly that it had stopped snowing and told him that he had been in a coma. She hoped he didn’t ask more.
“Did I scare you?” Xie Wei’s voice had also returned entirely to normal: neither scared little boy nor menacing drawl. It was hard to imagine that he’d been so crazy just a few hours before.
On the off chance that he recalled anything of what he’d done, Ning reassured Xie Wei that she knew his behaviour had been a product of his illness. “I won’t take anything you did last night to heart.”
Xie Wei looked at her for a long moment, his eyes clear and sane, his expression calm. “Although I was delusional as a result of my sickness, I knew what I was doing.”
Ning’s heart jolted as she looked back at him. What did Xie Wei mean? That he’d wanted to kiss her? That he believed she was meant to be his? Had his drunken declaration of feelings for her at Yanshuang Pavilion been real? She couldn’t quite fathom it.
She was dreadfully afraid, at that moment, that she had fallen in love with the man she’d thought would kill her. This hadn’t been her plan, not at all. Her heart was filled with a strange mix of fear and elation, as she looked into Xie Wei’s eyes. What would it be like to kiss him while he was sober?
Unfortunately, Jian Shu and Dao Qin arrived, and the spell was broken.
The four trudged back down the hill, not speaking. A little way down the hill, when Ning stumbled, Xie Wei wordlessly took her right hand in his left hand. His hand was still very warm, and it engulfed her small cold hand. Jian Shu and Dao Qin noticed this, but they didn’t say anything. They did exchanges glances, however. Ning knew well that Xie Wei’s and her protestations that nothing had happened last night had been unconvincing. She tried to remove her hand, and Xie Wei kept hold of it. After a while, he squeezed her hand. Ning smiled at him, and he smiled back. If he had been a different man, Ning would have called his smile shy.
At the bottom of the hill, men stood waiting. “You found them!” said one of the men. “Thank the heavens!”
“We found them,” said Jian Shu. “Thankfully, they’d found shelter in a cave and made a fire. They’re okay.”
“Definitely okay, thanks to Ning’er,” said Xie Wei, giving Ning an intense, smouldering look which made her heart turn over. It wasn’t going to be easy to continue to pretend that nothing had happened after this, not at all.
Ning was now regretting coming on this journey, but she had to be there for Zhiyi, and keep her promise. After that, she would go back to her village. Her beloved Xie Ju’an was a bad man, and she was still afraid that he would be the death of her. She had to make him understand that he did not deserve to be saddled with a bad woman like her. She’d put a stop to this mutual madness, no matter how tempted she was to continue it.
