By the time Lu Yan made it back to his front door carrying a heap of items, the night had already grown deep. He stood before the entrance, raising his hand to push it open, only to pause. He froze there, standing completely still like a misbehaving student forced to face the wall.
The door opened directly toward the bed. A living area, a kitchen, and a washroom—the small wooden cabin he had built consisted of only these three spaces. When he lived alone, he had never thought much of it, arranging things however was most comfortable. But now that there was someone else in the house, he regretted not partitioning off a proper bedroom. Should he just push the door open? Would that seem too intrusive? Knock? This is my damn house. What if she didn't open it? Push the door open and say "I'm back"? What if she was already asleep? At this hour, it would be strange if she wasn't. He turned the options over in his head for a long time, but not a single plan seemed viable.
Creak—
The door was pulled open from the inside. Jiang Ci stood at the threshold, the candlelight spilling out from behind her and casting his shadow long before him. She was draped in his cultivator's robe, her hair unbound and flowing loose over her shoulders. Her face was expressionless, though a faint dark circle shadowed beneath her eyes, suggesting she hadn't slept well.
Lu Yan snapped out of his daze and squeezed past her sideways. The bags and bundles in his hands brushed against the doorframe, making a series of rustling sounds.
“...Thanks. You're not asleep yet?” He didn't even know why he was thanking her.
Jiang Ci fell silent for a moment before quietly uttering three words: “Waiting for you.”
Lu Yan's throat tightened. His hands hovered in midair, unsure of where to go. Lowering his head, he pretended to organize the things on the table, his mind completely blank, unable to process anything. He fumbled around for a stool, sat down, and tried to break the awkwardness with a casual question. “...Have you eaten?”
Jiang Ci pursed her lips. She hesitated for a moment—should she say she wasn't hungry, or that she didn't want to eat, or tell the truth that she hadn't even touched the stove? She had glanced at the porridge in the pot but hadn't touched it. It wasn't that she didn't want to eat, but rather that she didn't know how to reheat it. She had never needed to lift a finger in the past.
“...No,” she ultimately chose the truth.
Lu Yan frowned. “Why?”
Jiang Ci twirled the corner of the oversized robe. While the garment served well enough as sleepwear, wearing it out in public was out of the question. She knew she had run into a good person. A truly good person. But she had nothing left to give him. She had no cultivation, no spirit stones, and the only thing remaining to her name was her sword, which was covered in cracks. It was likely that no one would want it, save perhaps for scavengers who took anything they could find. Her purity? Putting aside whether she could accept such a thing, just looking at her body full of wounds made her skin crawl when she applied the ointment earlier today. At this thought, she carefully studied Lu Yan's eyes. They were covered by a black cloth, and the candlelight cast shifting shadows across his face, making it impossible to see what lay beneath. He really shouldn't be able to see.
She felt relieved. But after that relief, she felt she shouldn't think of her benefactor this way. Thus, she reached out and lightly tapped the wooden headboard, as if brushing away something unclean.
“I'm... not hungry. Really, I'm not,” she said, crumpling the corner of her robe and smoothing it out, only to crumple it again. “You just got back, so rest first. I can manage on my own.” She didn't know when she had learned to say such things. In the past, she never needed to. In the past, someone else always did it for her.
“Not hungry?” Lu Yan repeated, his tone laced with clear skepticism. But he didn't press her. Since she claimed she wasn't hungry, he couldn't force her. He remembered the bag of chestnuts, fumbled around on the table for a moment, and pulled them out from the pile of items. The sugar coating had already cooled, clinging to the chestnut shells and glistening under the candlelight.
“If you're hungry, have some of these first.” He pushed the bag toward her.
“Ah?” Jiang Ci snapped out of her scrutiny of Lu Yan, a faint, unnatural blush coloring her cheeks. She didn't reply immediately, pulling her gaze back first before realizing how affected that seemed—after all, he couldn't see. So she straightened her back again and looked openly at the bag of chestnuts. She had never seen chestnuts before. To be precise, she had never seen chestnuts in their shells. In the past, they were always ground into flour and made into pastries, neatly arranged in small, perfect pieces on white porcelain plates. She had no idea chestnuts had a hard outer shell. But asking would make her look foolish. Even though she had already abandoned all self-respect in her miserable state, she believed she still passed the mandatory course of maintaining a good image in front of the opposite sex.
“Thank you.” She took the bag, picked up a chestnut, and examined it closely. She couldn't make heads or tails of it. She popped it into her mouth and bit down. Crunch. The shell shattered, and the meat inside crumbled along with it, mixing together so she couldn't tell what was edible and what wasn't. She chewed a couple of times. The shell fragments pricked her gums, causing a bit of pain, but the soft, starchy meat inside was indeed sweet. It tasted like the yellow jade millet cakes she used to eat, though not as refined.
She chewed very slowly. Not out of elegance, but because she didn't know how to chew it. She couldn't swallow the shell, yet she didn't know where to spit it out.
Lu Yan waited for a while, but no verbal review came. He only heard a continuous crunching sound, one after another, like a mouse gnawing on wood.
“...Is it good?” he finally couldn't help but ask.
With her mouth full of shell fragments, Jiang Ci let out a muffled, “Mmh.”
An unreadable expression crossed Lu Yan's face. He had guessed it. She was eating them with the shells on. He didn't know whether he should point it out or not. If he did, she would be embarrassed; if he didn't, she had already eaten them anyway. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“What's wrong?” Jiang Ci swallowed the shell fragments. A sharp, scratchy pain scraped down her throat, but she endured it.
“Nothing.” Lu Yan turned away, facing the direction of the stove.
“...Do you not peel your chestnuts when you eat them?” He still couldn't hold it in.
Jiang Ci froze, looking down at the remaining half in her hand. The shell was cracked open, revealing the pale yellow meat inside.
“...I didn't know they had to be peeled,” she said.
“Right.” Lu Yan didn't laugh. His lips twitched slightly, but he kept his face straight.
He fished out a chestnut from the bag, applied pressure with his fingertips, peeled a whole one, and handed it over. “Try this?”
Jiang Ci took the chestnut. It was round, plump, and still carried a trace of warmth from his fingertips. Lowering her eyes, she carefully placed the chestnut meat into her mouth. It was still very sweet and soft, but without that pricking sensation. It tasted wonderful.
“Thank you,” she mumbled around the chestnut, her voice even more muffled. But Lu Yan didn't mind. He picked up another one, preparing to peel it.
Jiang Ci quickly shook her head. “No need, I can do it myself.”
He didn't press the matter. It wasn't as if he had nothing better to do, nor did he possess some servile urge to wait on others hand and foot. Brushing the chestnut crumbs off his hands, he said, “Then go ahead. I'll go make some porridge.”
The fire in the stove was rekindled, water was added to the pot, and the rice was poured in. He squatted before the stove, stirring with a ladle to prevent it from sticking to the bottom. The porridge would need to simmer for a while, bubbling softly.
Jiang Ci began to focus all her attention on figuring out how to peel a perfectly round, intact chestnut. The esteemed Sword Heir was now locked in a fierce battle with a chestnut. She broke them into fragments, halves, and if she accidentally applied too much force, she ended up with chestnut mush. It wasn't that she lacked capability; she had simply never done it before. This was the first time she had ever known that chestnuts had shells, the first time she learned they needed to be peeled, and the first time she realized the meat was hidden inside. She peeled incredibly slowly, staring at each one for a long time before making a move. Any that she broke, she ate entirely. No waste.
At some point, yellow chestnut crumbs stuck to the corner of her mouth, though she remained unaware. There was no mirror in the room, and no one to tell her. He couldn't see, and she didn't know. She just sat there, crumbs on her lips, meticulously peeling the next chestnut.
A small wooden cabin. A man simmering porridge by the stove, a woman sitting on the edge of the bed peeling chestnuts. The porridge bubbled, and the chestnuts crunched. No one spoke.
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