Chapter Seven | The One Who Was Always by Her Side
Ever since she had waited in vain by the willow-lined shore that night, Lin Yuanxi had gradually developed the habit of looking toward the water every morning. She couldn't say exactly when it had begun. She only knew that every day when she opened her eyes, the first thing she did was walk to the window and stare at the little pond planted with calamus, checking for any unusual ripples on its surface.
Life in the Floating City continued to flow slowly to its own rhythm. The full moon waned little by little, then gradually began to wax again. The girls went on cleaning their respective ponds as usual, tending to the bonds they had chosen—or had yet to choose. Lin Yuanxi had also grown accustomed to this life, in which time was measured not by day and night but by the changing phases of the moon. Yet whenever the night grew deep and still, and she was alone, her worry over Jiang Yingze's continued absence would quietly rise in her heart.
The day Jiang Yingze appeared again, Lin Yuanxi was crouching beside the pond outside her little courtyard, trying to loosen the soil around a newly planted calamus.
Liu Zhiqing had brought it over a few days earlier, saying it was a newly cultivated variety that liked quiet places and would be perfect by the window. Lin Yuanxi actually knew nothing about caring for plants. She could only awkwardly copy what she had seen, her clumsy movements so unfamiliar that even she found them amusing.
"Don't pack the soil down too tightly."
A low voice suddenly came from behind her, carrying a distinctive rasp she recognized the instant she heard it.
Lin Yuanxi whipped around and saw Jiang Yingze standing at the entrance to the courtyard. He wore a clean moon-white robe, no longer looking anything like the drenched, miserable figure he had been on the night of the Fish Selection. His complexion looked much better than it had that night, though a trace of fatigue that had not yet completely faded still lingered between his brows.
"You..." Lin Yuanxi couldn't find the words. She was still clutching a handful of dirt. "You finally showed up."
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long." He walked a few steps closer and crouched beside her. His gaze fell on the crookedly planted calamus, and the corner of his lips lifted in the faintest smile. "If you plant it like that, it won't survive three days."
"Then how should I plant it?" Lin Yuanxi asked, somewhat embarrassed.
Jiang Yingze did not answer right away. Instead, he reached out and demonstrated, pressing down some of the soil she had loosened too much. He used precisely the right amount of force, his practiced movements making it seem as though this was far from his first time doing it.
"The roots need room to breathe, but the soil can't be too loose either. Otherwise, one heavy rain will wash it away and the whole plant will fall over." As he demonstrated, he explained, "It's like a lot of things. If you hold on too tightly or let go too easily, you can't keep them."
Lin Yuanxi stared blankly at his profile. She felt there was some unspoken meaning hidden in those words, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
"You know a lot about this?" she couldn't help asking.
"Before..." He paused, as if weighing his words. "There was a long time when I had nothing else to do. All I could do was watch the plants by the water grow and wither, day after day. After watching for long enough, I naturally came to understand them."
The loneliness hidden in those words made Lin Yuanxi's chest tighten, and for a moment she didn't know how to respond. She lowered her head to look at the calamus he had straightened, suddenly realizing that the "long time" Jiang Yingze had mentioned was probably the twelve years he had spent waiting for her.
Twelve years was long enough for a plant to grow and wither countless times. For a person, how impossibly long must it have been to wait alone?
She did not voice her thoughts. She simply continued working beside him in silence. A strange yet unawkward quiet settled between them, filled only by the occasional rustle of wind and the faint rippling of the water.
From that day on, Jiang Yingze began appearing frequently at Lin Yuanxi's side.
He never appeared for no reason. He always happened to show up when she needed help, or when she was alone and feeling lost and helpless, appearing nearby without making a fuss. Sometimes, when she couldn't figure out how to care for a certain pond plant, he would happen to pass by and offer a few pointers. Other times, when she got lost in the Floating City's complicated corridors and was hesitating over which way to go, his figure would appear around a corner, as though he had merely been passing through—or as though he had been waiting there for her.
"Everyone in the Floating City seems pretty used to you popping up like this." Once, Lin Yuanxi said half-jokingly, "Do you do this a lot—helping people out of nowhere and disappearing just as fast?"
Jiang Yingze smiled faintly but did not answer directly.
"The Floating City isn't that big. It's not strange to run into anyone." His tone held a hint of barely perceptible evasion.
Lin Yuanxi vaguely sensed that he probably did not often take the initiative to approach other people like this. But she did not call him on it. Instead, she quietly tucked away the unspoken understanding between them, that special rapport that belonged only to the two of them, deep in her heart.
Once, a dense fog suddenly rose in the Floating City from some unknown source. Even the corridors she knew best became impossible to navigate. Lin Yuanxi had been on her way to Water Lantern Pond to help arrange a new batch of water lanterns, but she completely lost her bearings halfway there. White mist surrounded her on every side, so thick that she could barely feel the faint vibrations of the bridge beneath her feet. She stood still, unease surging through her, and was hesitating over which direction to take when a hand suddenly and steadily caught her by the elbow.
"Follow me." Jiang Yingze's voice came through the fog, calm and steady in a way that put her at ease. "This fog was caused by the water spirit over at Zhuying Pond throwing a tantrum. It'll clear up after a while. Don't wander off on your own—you'll only get more lost."
He took her hand and led her through the white fog, which was so thick it seemed almost solid. His steps were steady, as if he knew this route by heart. Lin Yuanxi could feel the warmth of his palm. It was not scorching like a human's, yet neither was it the icy chill she imagined a fish would have. Instead, it was a perfectly balanced warmth, something between the two, leaving her inexplicably reassured.
"How did you know I'd be here?" she couldn't help asking.
Jiang Yingze did not answer immediately. His steps faltered slightly before he said in a low voice, "I always know where you are."
The certainty in those words made Lin Yuanxi's heart skip a beat. For a moment, she forgot how to respond and could only let him lead her, one step at a time, out of the fog.
When they emerged from the dense mist, daylight returned to the Floating City's usual crystalline brightness. Only then did Jiang Yingze release her hand, but the gentle warmth of his touch seemed to linger in her palm long after. He turned his head to glance at her, as though he had noticed her daze. The corner of his lips curved in the faintest smile, but he said nothing. He simply stood quietly beside her, waiting for her to regain her sense of direction.
"Thank you," Lin Yuanxi said softly.
"You don't have to thank me." His voice was gentle, carrying a tenderness she couldn't quite explain. "It's what I should do."
Those four words—what I should do—sounded to Lin Yuanxi like something far more solemn than ordinary kindness, almost as though he had long since come to regard caring for her as a natural, unquestionable responsibility rather than a simple favor.
As the time they spent together accumulated, Lin Yuanxi's understanding of Jiang Yingze deepened little by little. He did not talk much, yet he always managed to offer the right advice at exactly the right moment. His temperament was calm and gentle, and few things seemed capable of truly disrupting his pace. But every now and then, Lin Yuanxi would catch an extraordinarily complicated emotion flashing through his eyes—an emotion that usually appeared whenever she casually brought up something about the past or her childhood.
For example, once, as they sat idly beside the lotus pond, Lin Yuanxi mentioned in passing that she seemed to have a hazy memory connected to a torrential rainstorm. Jiang Yingze's previously relaxed expression instantly became intensely focused. A breathless anticipation surged in his golden eyes. But when she admitted that she couldn't remember anything at all, that anticipation vanished just as quickly, replaced by a disappointment she could not decipher yet could feel with perfect clarity.
"It's all right." He always said that, without the slightest trace of reproach in his voice. "When you're ready to remember, you'll remember naturally."
"Do you ever feel like you've waited too long for me to remember?" Lin Yuanxi couldn't help asking the question she had kept buried in her heart for so long.
Jiang Yingze looked at her. After a moment of silence, he slowly spoke.
"No." His voice was soft but unusually firm. "Being able to wait until you appeared in the Floating City was already something I never thought would happen. As for everything after that, no matter how long I have to wait, I'm willing to."
His words made Lin Yuanxi's heart skip a beat, and for a moment she had no idea how to respond. She lowered her head and looked at their reflections on the surface of the pond, sitting shoulder to shoulder—a scene she had never seen before, yet somehow found inexplicably familiar.
As the days passed, Lin Yuanxi gradually grew used to Jiang Yingze's companionship. She also began relying on the gentle, steady stream of care he gave her. She started looking forward to every moment he appeared, and whenever he was not beside her, she would unconsciously look around for him. Even when walking through the corridors, her steps would slow without her realizing it, as she thought that perhaps she would see his familiar figure around the next corner.
Only occasionally did she notice something subtly off.
Once, when they passed the outskirts of Lan Pool, Jiang Yingze suddenly paused. He looked toward the deep ink-green water, and an extraordinarily complicated emotion flickered across his face—something like sympathy, or perhaps a wariness she could neither explain nor name. She was about to ask him about it, but he quickly looked away and casually changed the subject, as though that brief moment of strangeness had merely been her imagination.
Another time, when they passed near the lotus pond, they saw Shen Heyin walking side by side with her shapeshifting fish in the distance. The instant Jiang Yingze saw them, his gaze dimmed almost imperceptibly, and his steps unconsciously slowed for half a beat. The change was so slight that it was nearly impossible to catch, but Lin Yuanxi noticed it all the same.
"You know her?" she asked cautiously.
"The Floating City isn't that big. Everyone knows everyone, more or less." Jiang Yingze's answer was as airtight as ever. His tone sounded perfectly natural, but Lin Yuanxi could not shake the feeling that a deliberately maintained calm lay hidden beneath it.
She did not press him further. She simply stored that inexplicable unease away in her heart.
That evening, Liu Zhiqing came to find her so they could sort a new batch of willow branches to be handed out. The two sat side by side beneath the corridor, their hands repeating the same mechanical motions. After hesitating for a long time, Lin Yuanxi finally couldn't stop herself from voicing the question on her mind.
"Zhiqing, do you think Jiang Yingze is hiding something from me?"
Liu Zhiqing's hands paused. She looked up at Lin Yuanxi, a hint of complicated emotion barely visible in her expression.
"Almost every fish in the Floating City has a past it doesn't want to bring up lightly." She spoke slowly, her tone more cautious than usual. "Especially someone like him, who has waited for so long. Some things aren't that he doesn't want to tell you. He's afraid that once he does, he'll scare you away, or... make you see him differently."
"Differently how?"
Liu Zhiqing did not answer directly. She only sighed softly.
"When the time is right, he'll tell you himself," she said. "For now, all you need to do is cherish the time you spend together. Don't rush to dig up every answer. Some truths are too much to bear if they come too soon."
Her words did nothing to lessen Lin Yuanxi's doubts; if anything, they deepened them. But she also understood that pressing further probably would not get her any more answers, so she could only push the unease down into the deepest part of her heart for now.
That night, Lin Yuanxi lay in bed, staring at the gradually waning moon outside the window as she went over every moment she had spent with Jiang Yingze during this time. His gentleness, his thoughtfulness, and the loneliness and restraint he occasionally revealed when the past surfaced—together, they were like pieces of a puzzle, slowly forming the image of someone who felt increasingly familiar yet remained full of mysteries.
She raised a hand to her chest. That familiar warmth had quietly become intertwined with another emotion—a cautious yet utterly real longing to draw close to someone, a feeling she had never truly experienced before.
She closed her eyes. The image of his steady hand holding hers in the daytime fog rose in her mind, along with the unshakable certainty in his voice when he said, "I always know where you are." Suddenly, she wondered: If twelve years ago she really had rescued a dying little fish on some stormy afternoon, then could the person who always appeared at exactly the right moment by her side be that tiny act of kindness returning to her after all those long years?
The thought made her chest grow hot, aching and warm at once. She could not tell whether it was gratitude or some deeper feeling she herself had not yet recognized, quietly taking root in her heart.
But she did not yet know that this feeling, only just beginning to bloom, would soon be quietly pushed toward the center of a storm by another person.