The very instant the red bridal veil was lifted, Shen Zhiyi saw the candlelight shatter into gold leaf in Xie Yanzhi's pupils. His fingertips brushed the pearl tassels at her temples, his tone steeped in honey: "A'yi is so breathtakingly beautiful, it's as if she stepped right out of a painting."
At the time, she simply took it for the sweet nothing of newlyweds—until the third day after marrying into the Xie Estate, when she caught him whispering to a political strategist around the corridor's corner. "This temperament is somewhat similar..." His voice trembled slightly, the tail end of his words scattering into the spring breeze like a dew-kissed butterfly wing. She clutched her handkerchief tightly, suddenly recalling how, when he pinned her hair ornament the previous night, the pads of his fingers had lingered on her earlobe for three whole seconds, burning with a heat that seemed intent on carving her into the likeness of someone else.
Xie Yanzhi treated her impeccably, leaving no room for fault. When she complained that the pear blossoms in the courtyard bloomed too lonely in the spring, craftsmen erected a carved wooden swing in the corridor the very next day, its ropes tied full of snowy white silk flowers. When she craved iced grapes to beat the summer heat, he actually dispatched men on fast horses to ship whole crates of seedless green grapes all the way from the Western Regions; when they arrived served in crushed ice, droplets of water were still clinging to the skins. The maidships envied her in private: "My lady has truly fallen into a nest of fortune."
Only in the dead of night by the pillow, would he occasionally softly murmur "A'ning" in his dreams. The sound was like a feather, scraping her heart until it itched and ached. She traced her eyebrow shape before the bronze mirror, watching the person in the mirror gradually overlap with the embroidered pattern on the pale moon-white ruqun in the wardrobe—a pattern Xie Yanzhi had personally drawn after she married in, saying, "There was once a girl who loved wearing moon-white best."
The upheaval happened in late autumn. While organizing his study for him, she discovered a scroll hidden in a concealed compartment. The edges of the silk were stained a weathered yellowish-beige; in the painting, a woman leaned lazily against a bamboo couch, a string of red coral prayer beads around her wrist glowing with a warm luster, as though about to drip with blood. Her fingertips grazed the tear mole at the corner of the painted figure's eye, and suddenly she heard the sound of porcelain shattering behind her.
Xie Yanzhi's teacup had smashed against the cyan bricks, the brownish tea winding away like a river and reflecting his abruptly pale face. "A'yi..." He reached out to snatch back the scroll, but abruptly recoiled the moment he touched her fingertips, as if scalded by fire.
The servants' whispering voices hid behind the corridor pillars like a pack of rats afraid of the light. "That was Miss Su of the former Minister's estate, betrothed to the young master since childhood..." "I heard the Su family accepted the Liang family's betrothal gifts, tearing this pair of mandarin ducks apart by force..." Clutching that string of red coral beads, she stood beneath the pomegranate tree as the autumn wind swept dead leaves past her ear, suddenly remembering how Xie Yanzhi had taken her to browse a jewelry shop last month, and pointing at the identical bracelet with a dazed flash in the depths of his eyes, had said, "This color suits you."
"Do you love me because I look like her, or out of guilt?" The midnight candlelight cast her shadow against the folding screen like a crumpled paper kite. Xie Yanzhi reached out to embrace her, but she turned aside to avoid him. His Adam's apple bobbed as he finally uttered those heart-piercing words: "When I first met you, the moon-white ruqun you wore looked exactly like her wedding gown on the day she left her maiden home."
When winter snow filled the courtyard, she insisted on returning to her maternal home. Xie Yanzhi stood at the ceremonial gate, his fingertips still clutching half of her sleeve. "A'yi, give me some time..." Unprecedented panic laced his voice, yet it failed to stir the slightest ripple in the depths of her eyes. As the carriage wheels crushed the accumulated snow, she lifted the curtain and saw him still standing in the exact same spot, like a statue weathered dry by the passage of time.
Three days later, news came that the young master of the Xie Estate had fallen gravely ill. A maid holding a bowl of medicine urged her: "My lady, please go and take a look. The young master holds that painting all day long, crying out your name." She crushed the teacup in her hand, the shards piercing her palm, yet unable to match the dull ache in her heart—turns out, whether he was calling out "A'ning" or "A'yi" all along, even she herself could no longer tell them apart.
On New Year's Eve, she received a box sent by Xie Yanzhi from her maiden home. Inside was half of a scroll; the face of the figure in the painting had already been mottled with cinnabar, leaving only the red coral around her wrist as bright and vivid as ever. Pressed to the bottom of the box was a letter, the handwriting piercing straight through the paper: "In former years she wore a moon-white bridal gown to become another man's wife; today I wear dark mourning robes to send you back home."
Outside the window, firecrackers blasted deafeningly. She stared at her own face stripped of all makeup in the mirror, and suddenly laughed until tears fell. Their story, it turned out, had been a wrongly copied painting right from the start—he could not paint her soul, and she could never become his moon.
The snow fell silently, whitening the old plum tree in front of the Xie Estate's gates. Some said they saw a woman clad in a moon-white ruqun journeying far away alone by boat, the red coral on her wrist gleaming coldly in the moonlight, looking precisely like that girl who failed to marry him all those years ago. As for the young master of the Xie Estate, he ultimately failed to survive this winter; they say that right before he breathed his last, he was clutching half a residual scroll tightly, a single unfallen tear still frozen at the corner of his eye.
It turns out that the most ruthless thing in this world is never the winter's snow, but affection misplaced. She had once been his moon in the mirror and flower in the water, yet she could never rival that vibrant figure lingering in his memories. Awakening from a great dream, one realizes at last that there is never a perfect compromise in the mortal realm; only deep devotion bestowed upon the wrong person, leaving behind a world full of empty regrets...