As the days passed, Li Yue continued her repetitive routine at the coffee shop. For reasons she couldn't quite fathom, business only seemed to improve with each passing day.
Trainees from across the four seas were slowly arriving on this continent imbued with dreams and miracles. They carried aspirations of making a name for themselves, eager to showcase their talents to the world.
With the start of the new term approaching, some of the academy's buildings gradually opened to the public. This core area, home to dozens of high towers and palaces, was the East Campus of Karl Romon Academy. It was known as the highest hall of the Art Department, though it naturally hosted a diverse array of magic factions as well.
However, the two of them didn't seem to care about any of that. They hadn't come here with such ambitions. Clo wanted to spend the best years of her life here with her beloved, while Li Yue sought a peaceful life in a place that offered a semblance of the warmth of home after long years of slaughter and pain.
Clo was always the shop's final guest. Every evening, she would wait patiently for Li Yue to change into her casual clothes. Then, she would take her hand and lead her on a wander around the grounds under the guise of a campus tour. They would pick a few flowers from the garden beneath the principal's statue, and then Clo would pull Li Yue along in a quick sprint. By the lake, where the sunset's afterglow scattered across the water, they would crumble bread and toss it into the lake to feed the few wild ducks still waddling about.
Clo pulled Li Yue along as they ran wildly down the twilight avenues; no one knew of it but the wind.
She wanted to love, to love like an infatuated paramour, to love like a dreamer who had forgotten death. She treated the gazes of others like flickering will-o'-the-wisps, boldly walking her own night path.
They would run together to the top of a tower in the East Campus to watch the sunset. In those moments, Li Yue would often marvel at the gentleness of the setting sun. Its soft, warm light seemed to soothe everyone exhausted by the twilight hour. However, she failed to notice that while she watched the sunset, another pair of gentle eyes was watching her.
The person who accompanies you to watch the sunset is often gentler than the sunset itself.
They spoke no more of the past. Pain and happiness are not brought at birth nor taken at death; only the twilight remains, magnificent and supreme.
And raindrops, within the clouds and their bells, spending the night with the ocean, commanding the stars, ordering us to anchor and gaze, crowning oneself as the sovereign of the wind.
Two lonely souls had met, sharing their solitude. Under the glow of the starlight, they were two solitudes together.
It felt as if time were flowing backward. The world became small again—so small that they seemed to be each other's everything.
Embracing sorrow at night, unbinding its hair and closing the door—not to imprison joy, but to liberate sadness.
The feeling of love was hazy, yet Li Yue could feel it. Just a tiny bit, as if it had crawled out from the long river of time and her own memories, unstoppable by anything.
She would occasionally stop in her tracks, but time remained hurried, as was the girl holding her hand. When that gentle pull came, she would find her stride again, as if stepping back into a waking dream.
Her steps were slow and leisurely, so slow and filled with so many pauses that it felt like a sob.
Life was bittersweet. I have been waiting, waiting for life to become sweet again, thinking about how to truly live.
Every day seemed the same, yet every day seemed different. From dawn to dusk, until the universe sank and the stars shone bright, Li Yue didn't know how much time they had left. But this was the only time she had felt true happiness since arriving in this world.
She didn't know how to preserve this time; she only occasionally made a wish to the setting sun.
O Time, could you stay forever at this moment?
Though it was early spring, where warmth was still chased by bursts of chill, Li Yue felt waves of heat, as if it were a balmy summer day. She didn't understand why she felt such a throb in her heart—it felt like a long-lost lover rather than a sudden, ignorant spark of love at first sight. Clo's love for her felt like an affection that had existed for a long time, no different from the hazy love she felt in her memories.
It was what she had sought in her dreams in the past but could never find in reality...
Under that heat, which burned like the summer sun, Li Yue's heart—once as pained and frozen as midwinter—gradually began to thaw. Her sins, her agony, and her wounds vanished bit by bit.
During those days of pain, the taste of missing someone was like drinking a large glass of ice water, only for it to turn into warm tears over a very, very long time.
I don't believe in love either, but the way you make me feel is unique in all the world.
In the afternoon, the empty coffee shop still held the faint aroma of chocolate and coffee powder, smelling sweet. The afternoon sun lay lazily across the table, casting a soft light on a sheet of white stationery. A light blue quill was scratching elegant handwriting upon it.
This is the sunlight of early spring, but because of you, it is as brilliant as the height of summer.
She tucked the letter into her ring. It drifted down beside the hand of the blue-haired girl leaning over the table reading. The girl smiled slightly and opened the letter:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
Rate on N.U.
