The grand, sun-drenched solarium of Lily’s mansion, which just hours ago had been a stage for chaotic reunions and emotional breakdowns, was now filled with a new, and infinitely more comforting, aroma. The faint, lingering scent of ozone and pulverized marble had been completely overpowered by the rich, fragrant steam of soy, ginger, and sweet, caramelized sauces.
Miss Yinzi, with the quiet, effortless efficiency of a master, had transformed Lily’s sterile, state-of-the-art kitchen into a bastion of Ruhong comfort. The massive, polished obsidian dining table, usually reserved for ornamental fruit bowls and Lily’s solitary, judging gaze, was now laden with a feast that was a world away from Spica’s delicate, portion-controlled cuisine.
There were platters of glistening, golden-brown roasted duck, its skin perfectly crisp. Heaping bowls of stir-fried noodles, glistening with oil and studded with colorful, crisp vegetables. Baskets of fluffy, snow-white steamed buns, their tops split open to reveal a savory, saucy meat filling. And in the very center, a place of high honor, sat a large, beautiful honey-apple pie, its latticed crust baked to a perfect, golden-brown, the sweet scent of cinnamon and apples a nostalgic, comforting cloud that enveloped the entire room.
“Alright, everyone, it’s ready!” Miss Yinzi called from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron that Serra had dutifully, and somewhat reverently, found for her.
The group, which had been scattered around the living room in various states of awkward, post-reunion conversation, needed no further invitation. They flocked to the table with an almost comical speed.
“Yes! Food!” Jack was the first in his seat, his eyes wide with an almost religious fervor as he gazed upon the feast. Raito was a close second, his own smile a mirror of Jack’s pure, unadulterated joy.
“Hmph.” Lily, who had finally changed out of her rabbit robe and into a set of fine, if casual, silk pajamas, took her seat at the head of the table. “I suppose this is… acceptable,” she declared, her voice a theatrical, grudging concession as she eyed the unfamiliar, rustic-looking dishes. “Though I shudder to think of the state my kitchen is in.”
No one paid her any mind. They were all too busy passing plates, their earlier tensions momentarily forgotten in the face of a good, home-cooked meal.
Lily let out a small, indignant huff at being so thoroughly ignored. She picked up her chopsticks with a delicate, almost dainty grip, plucked a single, small piece of sweet and sour pork, and brought it to her lips with the cautious air of a queen sampling for poison.
She chewed. Once. Twice.
Her eyes, which had been narrowed in aristocratic disdain, suddenly widened. A small, almost imperceptible sound, a high-pitched, surprised, and utterly undignified “Hmm?!”, escaped her. Before anyone could comment, she was a blur of motion, her chopsticks flying as she began to eat with a speed and a ferocity that was a world away from the poised, elegant Jewel of the Sea.
A quiet, suppressed giggle rippled around the table. Lily froze, her cheeks flushing a deep, brilliant crimson as she realized she had been caught. She quickly composed herself, placing her chopsticks down with a shaky, practiced grace, and cleared her throat. “The… the temperature is adequate,” she declared to the ceiling, refusing to meet anyone’s gaze.
“So, what have you been doing, Kun?” Jack’s voice, full of a genuine, easygoing curiosity, finally broke the amused silence. He gestured with his chopsticks, his mouth full of noodles. “You know… after that.”
The question, so simple and so direct, made the table fall quiet for a moment. Miss Yinzi’s hands, which had been in the middle of cutting a slice of pie, paused. Yukari’s gaze, soft and warm, settled on her husband.
Raito swallowed the bite he had just taken, his own expression thoughtful. He looked at Jack, then at Miss Yinzi’s kind, expectant face. He couldn’t tell them. Not the whole truth. Not about the mechanical serpent, the cults, the war, and mechanical doll. It would only worry her.
So, he gave them the only version he could.
“Oh, you know,” he said, his voice a masterpiece of casual nonchalance as he picked up a steamed bun. “Been here and there. Running away, mostly.” He took a bite, chewed, and continued, ticking off the points with a vague wave of his hand. “Did some farming for a while. Met some… interesting people.” He just smiled. “Met a few snakes. Went on a vacation. Saw a doll.” He shrugged, as if summarizing a particularly uneventful trip to the market. “The usual stuff, I guess.”
“I… I see,” Jack replied, his gaze flickering with an understanding that went deeper than Raito’s vague words. He knew his friend was lying, or at least, telling a carefully edited version of the truth. He could see the shadows behind Raito’s casual smile, the new, hardened confidence that hadn't been there a year ago. But he also knew his friend. He new that Raito wouldn't want to worry Miss Yinzi, so Jack didn’t press further.
“How about you?” Raito quickly shot the question back, eager to move the spotlight. “You said you quit your job, then somehow met Miss Yinzi back in Moulang. How did that even happen? That sounds so random.”
“Oh, that,” Jack said, his own cheerful expression turning a little more somber. He put down his chopsticks, the memory a heavy one. “Yeah, I told you I quit. To be honest… I just couldn’t stomach what Jinlun did to you. What I saw…” His massive fist clenched on the table, a brief, angry tremor. “It was too much for me.”
He took a breath, letting the old anger pass. “After that… well, before that, actually, Mister Zhang told me to say hello to you if I ever met you.”
Raito’s eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise. “That old man?” he thought of his gruff, angry, slave-driving old boss in the Jinlun warehouse. “Doesn’t sound like him.”
“Don’t be like that,” Jack chided gently. “He still looked after you back then, didn’t he? He gave you a job when no one else would.”
“Guess you’re right. My bad,” Raito conceded, a small, sheepish smile on his face. “So… continue.”
“So yeah,” Jack said, picking his chopsticks back up. “When I told him I wanted to quit, Mister Zhang just… agreed. Didn’t even argue. He just said he knew where I came from and gave me that message for you.”
He shrugged, a massive, simple gesture. “After that, I just traveled. A little bit all over Ruhong. Aimlessly. I didn’t know where to go, or what my next job would be.” His gaze drifted to Miss Yinzi, and his smile returned, warm and genuine. “Until I just randomly stumbled upon Moulang.”
“That is one heck of a coincidence,” Raito said, his mouth full as he began chowing down on a bowl of noodles with a renewed, almost frantic energy, his earlier vague explanations completely forgotten in the face of good food and old friends.
“Kun, slow down,” Miss Yinzi said, her voice a familiar, gentle scolding that cut through his enthusiastic eating. She placed another piece of duck on his plate, her expression one of fond, maternal exasperation. “There is still more in the back.”
“Sorry, Miss Yinzi,” Raito replied, his voice muffled as he swallowed. He gave her a sheepish, almost boyish grin. “It’s just… it’s been a while since I got to taste your cooking.”
Miss Yinzi just smiled, a soft, warm expression. Her gaze lingered on him for a moment, her eyes full of a quiet, profound assessment. “You have changed, Kun,” she said softly, her voice a simple, clear observation.
“Did I?” Raito looked down at himself, at the simple, comfortable clothes he wore, a stark contrast to the formal suit of the night before. “I don’t look that much different,” he said with a casual shrug.
But it was clear, to everyone at the table who had known him before, that he was a different person. The scrawny, almost gaunt frame of the boy who had hidden in the shadows of an orphanage and the grime of a warehouse was gone. In its place was a young man with a lean, strong build, his shoulders broader, his posture confident. And it wasn’t just physical. The weary, haunted look that had always lingered in the corners of his eyes, the look of a boy who felt he didn’t belong, had been replaced by a quiet, steady, and unshakeable self-assurance.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Jack and Miss Yinzi looked at each other across the table, a shared, silent, and profoundly grateful smile passing between them. They were just glad that Raito, their Kun, was safe, sound, and finally, truly, happy.
“Right,” Jack continued, picking his story back up. “So, after I met Miss Yinzi, I just… started helping her around her house. It was nice, you know? Finding someone who actually knew you as just… you. Not as a fugitive.”
“Jack is so helpful,” Miss Yinzi interjected, her smile full of a genuine, maternal warmth. “He can easily lift up my furniture to help me clean. I am so glad in my old age, to have someone so strong and kind helping me.”
“I see,” Raito said, a slow, knowing smile spreading across his face as he finally connected the dots. “So that is when you two decided to go here for the Grand Play.”
“Something like that,” Jack replied. He glanced at Miss Yinzi, and the two of them shared a quiet, almost conspiratorial giggle. Raito just stared, his brow furrowed in confusion. There was clearly an inside joke there, a piece of the story he was missing.
“How unlucky indeed that it got cancelled,” Miss Yinzi said, deftly changing the subject, her gaze turning thoughtful. “I was really hoping to see what the play this year was about.”
Raito, who had just been about to take a large bite of his honey-apple pie, froze. The memory of the play—the blue-haired general, the dock-working “Kylie,” the porridge, the prison break—flashed in his mind, a vivid, horrifying montage of secondhand embarrassment. He quickly turned his gaze to Lily, who was busy dissecting a steamed bun with the precision of a surgeon, pointedly ignoring everyone.
“You didn’t miss much,” Raito said, his voice a flat, deadpan thing as he finally took the bite of pie, the sweet taste a stark, almost cruel contrast to the bitter memory.
On the other side of the table, a different, much quieter conversation was taking place. Yukari and Zhu Lihua sat side-by-side, the distance between them filled with the heavy, unspoken weight of years. They ate in silence, a stark contrast to the easy, boisterous chatter of Raito and Jack.
Finally, Yukari broke the quiet. She set her chopsticks down, her movements deliberate. “How have you been… Mother?” she asked, the last word quiet, hesitant, but clear.
Zhu Lihua, who had been in the middle of taking a bite of steamed bun, choked. She coughed, her eyes wide with pure, unadulterated shock. She had been expecting ‘Master.’ She had been bracing for the familiar, respectful, and distant title. But ‘Mother’… that was new. That was a variable she had not, in all her centuries of tactical planning, anticipated.
“What… what happened to ‘Master’?” Zhu finally managed, her voice a rough, strained thing after she had taken a hurried sip of water.
“You were the one who said that you wanted us to connect more as a step-family, did you not?” Yukari replied, a small, cheeky smile playing on her lips, her earlier hesitation gone, replaced by a quiet, teasing confidence. “Did you forget? Or should I just go back to calling you ‘Master’?”
“Right,” Zhu said, her composure slowly returning, though a faint flush remained on her cheeks. “I… I did say that. Very well.” She cleared her throat, her posture straightening, the War Empress returning, if only slightly. “I’ll take ‘Mother’ from now on.” Her sharp, fiery eyes scanned her stepdaughter, a new, analytical light in them. “You have changed, Linlin. The old you was not as… direct as you are now.”
“Well, that is what happens when you almost die multiple times,” Yukari said with a casual, almost breezy nonchalance that made Zhu’s grip on her teacup tighten. “And get married.” She held up her left hand, a simple, elegant gesture, displaying the two rings—the silver wedding band and the glittering, sakura-shaped diamond of her Core.
Zhu Lihua slammed her cup down onto the obsidian table. The sound, a sharp, angry crack , was so loud it momentarily silenced the other side of the table. Raito and Jack froze, their chopsticks halfway to their mouths.
Zhu composed herself instantly, though a muscle in her jaw twitched. “You got married?” she asked, her voice a low, dangerous, and uncharacteristically shocked whisper. She glared across the table. “Is it… is it that unassuming boy over there? You actually married him?”
“Yep,” Yukari said, her smile widening, her teasing tone now in full force as she relished her stepmother’s rare, beautiful loss of composure. “He is my lovely….. husband.”
“When did it happen? How long ago?” Zhu demanded, her questions sharp, rapid-fire.
Yukari tilted her head, tapping a finger to her chin in a gesture of thoughtful recollection. “In Hanyuun, I think. A few weeks ago by now.” Then, with a nonchalance so perfect it was a work of art, she added, “But we have slept together from way before that.” She was, of course, thinking of Rara’s horrified reaction to them sharing a bed, a memory that still made her giggle.
“Wha—?!” Zhu Lihua was left completely, utterly speechless. She was so taken aback she couldn't even form the words.
Yukari smirked. “I guess I finally got one on you… Mother,” she said, teasingly.
Zhu Lihua let out a long, slow sigh, her earlier shock giving way to a weary resignation. She quietly whispered under her breath, “I will kill that boy,” and shot a glacial glare across the table at Raito, who immediately shivered, a cold, inexplicable dread washing over him.
“Alright, you got it, Linlin,” Zhu said, her voice regaining its familiar, steady tone. She looked at her stepdaughter, a new, almost fond respect in her fiery eyes. “You really are your mother’s daughter.”
Yukari’s smile faltered slightly at the mention of her mother, the name a quiet, bittersweet note in the cheerful room. She didn’t understand what Zhu Lihua meant by that, but she didn’t press. “So,” she asked, deftly changing the subject, “what have you been up to, Mother?”
Zhu Lihua’s expression turned somber, the brief, lighthearted moment gone. “I have been observing Jinlun right after you left,” she said, her voice low. “Just to see. To hope that it could be better. That it could find the faults within itself.” She shook her head, her gaze distant. “But I was wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Yukari asked, though her own voice was quiet. Deep down, she already knew. The corruption, the masks, the hollow performance of it all… everything that had been revealed during that fateful day two years ago.
Seeing the quiet, painful understanding in Yukari’s eyes, Zhu continued. “Like you expected, you, the Snow Flower, were the catalyst. Jinlun turns out to be a city of masks and lies. And with you leaving… those masks cracked, revealing the true forms underneath.”
She took a sip of her tea, her gaze hardening. “Let’s start with that Xiang Feng boy. He is corrupted. Utterly. At this point, he has this twisted, fanatical vision of the ‘perfect Snow Flower,’ and only that perfection is allowed. He won’t tolerate any mistake. And if anyone, civilian or noble, dares to commit a single, minor infraction, he has them captured. Imprisoned.”
Yukari’s hand, resting on the table, slowly curled into a tight, white-knuckled fist.
“And the King,” Zhu continued, her voice laced with a quiet contempt, “he is hopeless.”
“That King,” Zhu Lihua said, her voice a low, dismissive growl, “he only treats his subjects as assets. Assigning some random, arbitrary value to every single one of them. And if, by any means, that value starts to drop in his eyes…” She let out a short, humorless laugh. “He imprisons them. Throws them away like broken tools.”
She shook her head, a look of profound disgust on her face. “Everything became a mess. Or rather, the dark, rotten side of that city finally came out to the surface. Like that rabbit boy over there,” she gestured with her head towards Jack, “most of the sane ones left. They sought asylum in other towns, other villages. The grand central of Ruhong, the Jinlun we knew… it is no more. It’s just a prison, ruled by a tyrant with his delusional little sidekick.”
Zhu Lihua took another sip of her tea, her gaze distant. “So, I left. There are more pressing matters in this world than that... that dying place, anyway.”
A heavy silence settled over their side of the table. Yukari stared down at her own hands, at the rings that represented her new life, her new freedom. But the shadows of her past were long, and they had just cast a pall over the bright, warm room.
“It’s my fault,” she whispered, the words a quiet, pained confession.
“No, it’s not.”
The voice, calm, steady, and impossibly close, startled her. Raito was suddenly there, standing beside her chair, his own meal forgotten. He had clearly been listening, his earlier cheerful demeanor gone, replaced by a quiet, fierce intensity.
“Where did you come from?” Yukari yelped, her hand flying to her chest. “Don’t startle me like that.”
Raito didn’t say a word. He just reached out, his hand, warm and calloused, gently taking her chin. And then, he pinched her cheek.
“It’s not your fault,” he said again, his voice a low, firm, and utterly non-negotiable command. His crimson eyes, no longer hidden by their usual easygoing warmth, bored into hers, holding her gaze. “I won’t let you say that.”
He let go of her cheek, his expression softening just a fraction. “They used you,” he said, his voice a quiet, unshakeable truth. “They burned you out. Don’t you remember? They were always like that. Hiding behind their masks.”
He leaned a little closer, his voice dropping to a murmur that was just for her. “Now, you are free. You have no chains that bind you to that place.” He held her gaze, his own full of a fierce, protective loyalty. “Understand?”
Yukari just stared at him, at the quiet, unshakeable strength that had grown in the boy she had once thought she needed to protect. A slow, watery, and unbelievably grateful smile broke through her somber expression. She nodded, a single, sharp, and definitive motion.
And then, her hand shot out, her fingers finding his cheek in a matching, retaliatory pinch.
“It hurts, idiot,” she whispered, her voice a mixture of a sob and a laugh.
They let go at the same time, the familiar, ridiculous gesture a perfect, silent, and final breaking of the spell.
“Blerghh, both of you are idiots,” Lily commented, her voice a sharp, theatrical note of disgust that broke the heavy, emotional mood.
“Aww, do you want to be included?” Yukari teased, her good humor instantly restored as she turned her beaming, if slightly tear-streaked, face towards the head of the table.
“No!” Lily flustered, her face flushing a delicate pink. “Of course not!”
“AHHHHHH!!!!!” A sudden, high-pitched, and utterly terrified scream, a sound that was a world away from the easy, post-meal chatter, suddenly erupted from Bob. Everyone at the table jumped, their heads snapping towards the giant merchant.
“I remember!” he wailed, his face a mask of pure, dawning horror. He scrambled to his feet, his massive frame sending his chair crashing backward to the floor. “I left Mila alone at the hospital!”
With a speed that defied his size, he lunged for the table, his massive hands a blur as he began frantically scooping leftover duck, noodles, and steamed buns into a burlap sack he had produced from thin air.
“Sorry, kids! Gotta go!” he boomed, his voice a mixture of panic and apology as he sprinted for the door, the overstuffed, and now very greasy, sack slung over his shoulder.
