The moment the door closed behind him, Jiang Ming found himself standing in a long corridor.
The floor was polished dark wood. Dark gold wallpaper lined both walls, with intricate vine patterns shimmering faintly in the light.
The corridor seemed endless. The doors on either side repeated the same style. Jiang Ming had no choice but to keep walking. When he reached the seventh door, the handle turned on its own.
Click.
The door slid open a crack.
Jiang Ming pushed it open.
Behind the door was a study.
A massive floor-to-ceiling window took up an entire wall. Outside wasn’t the leaden sky of Opas, but an endless, churning sea of dark gold clouds. The clouds surged slowly, occasionally revealing star-like glimmers shimmering deep below.
Bookshelves filled the room, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, packed tight with books. A wide mahogany desk faced the window. Several thick ancient texts lay open on the surface, a quill stuck at an angle in an inkwell.
Lillian sat in the high-backed chair behind the desk.
She wore a simple white nightgown, her long silver-white hair draped loosely over her shoulders, devoid of any jewelry. Her back was to the door as she faced the eternal sea of clouds, motionless.
Jiang Ming entered the room. The sound of his footsteps was swallowed completely by the thick carpet.
“Lillian,” he called out softly.
The figure in the chair didn’t react.
Jiang Ming walked around to the front of the desk. Then he saw it — Lillian’s face.
That face, which was always calm, perfect, and possessed the majesty of an Empress, was now soaked in tears. Tears flowed silently from her crimson eyes, rolling down her pale cheeks and gathering at her chin before falling, drop by drop, onto the back of her hands folded in her lap.
She made no sound. She simply stared at the void beyond the window, letting the tears flow.
The scene possessed a cruel beauty. She looked like a melting statue of ice and snow, dismantling her own existence.
Jiang Ming crouched down in front of her.
The moment their eyes met, Lillian’s pupils stirred. Those red eyes, washed by tears, finally focused on Jiang Ming’s face.
“… Jiang Ming?”
Her voice was light, as if she had just woken from a long dream.
“It’s me,” Jiang Ming replied.
Lillian blinked, and more tears fell. She reached out, her fingertips trembling as they lightly touched Jiang Ming’s cheek. Her touch was ice-cold and wet with tears.
“Is it real…” she murmured, “not a hallucination?”
“It’s not.” Jiang Ming took her hand. It was as cold as ice, shivering in his palm.
In the next second, Lillian threw herself into his arms.
It wasn’t an elegant embrace, but the desperate lunging grasp of a drowning person clinging to a piece of wood. Her arms locked tightly around his neck, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder. Scalding tears instantly soaked his collar.
“I’m sorry…” she sobbed into his ear, her voice so broken it was barely a sentence. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
She repeated the words countless times. Each one was like a small knife, carving out another piece of her own heart.
Jiang Ming didn’t move. He let her hold him, let her tears soak his shoulder, and let her guilt — suppressed for 100 years — pour out like a bursting dam.
After a long time, Lillian’s crying finally subsided into intermittent sobs. But she still didn’t let go, as if the person before her would turn to ash again if she did.
“Lillian,” Jiang Ming finally spoke, his voice calm. “Look at me.”
She shook her head, burying her face deeper into his shoulder.
“Look at me,” he repeated, his tone gaining a hint of irresistible force.
Lillian’s body stiffened. Then, she slowly and reluctantly raised her head.
Her tear-stained face was inches away. Her eyes were red and swollen, the tip of her nose flushed, and her lips pale from biting them too hard. There was no trace of an Empress’s majesty left; she was only a fragile, remorseful girl afraid of losing him again.
“Tell me,” Jiang Ming looked at her, his dark eyes deep as an ancient well. “What are you afraid of?”
Lillian’s lips moved, but only a whisper of “I’m sorry” came out.
“Not ‘I’m sorry,'” Jiang Ming interrupted her apology. “Tell me, right now, in this place, what are you afraid of?”
Silence spread through the room. Outside, the dark gold sea of clouds continued to roll slowly.
“I’m afraid…” Lillian finally spoke, her voice hoarse. “I’m afraid you hate me.”
Her fingers gripped Jiang Ming’s collar, her knuckles turning white.
“I’m afraid that when you look at me, there’s only coldness and disgust in your eyes. I’m afraid you remember everything.”
She closed her eyes, tears seeping through her lashes again.
“But I’m even more afraid… that you don’t remember.”
This sentence was spoken softly, yet it felt heavier than all her previous cries.
“I’m afraid you’ve forgotten everything between us — the good, the bad, everything. I’m afraid that to you, I’m just a stranger, a nonsensical woman who won’t leave you alone. I’m afraid the decades we spent together… mean nothing to you.”
She opened her eyes, her crimson pupils filled with desperate pleading.
“If that’s the case… what was my 100-year wait for? What was my penance, my loneliness… for?”
Jiang Ming fell silent.
After a long time, Lillian asked again, “Do you hate me?”
Jiang Ming remained silent for a long while.
Then, he spoke.
His voice was calm.
“Lillian,” he said, “do you know what something like hate becomes on the scale of time?”
Lillian stared at him blankly, tears still pooling in her swollen eyes.
“It becomes a debt,” Jiang Ming answered his own question. His gaze bypassed her, looking out at the eternal void beyond the window. “A bad debt where the principal and interest cannot be calculated, the creditor cannot be found, and even the promissory note has been burned to ash…”
He looked back at her.
“You ask if I hate you. I could give you a straightforward answer. Hate, or don’t hate. But what meaning would that have?”
He gently pried her clenched fingers apart. The movement wasn’t tender, but it wasn’t rough either. It was like untying a dead knot — it required patience, a bit of skill, and most importantly, the willingness of the person involved to let go.
“Does hating you turn back the great fire? Does it make the chains fall from my wrists? Does it allow you to cast a different vote in The Council 100 years ago?”
Lillian’s lips moved, but no sound came out.
“It doesn’t,” Jiang Ming answered for her. “So the word ‘hate’ is useless here. It’s too light; so light it can’t carry the weight of 100 years. Yet it’s also too heavy; so heavy that once spoken, it would crush the fragile ground we’re standing on.”
He stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. The sea of clouds outside receded slightly as he approached, revealing the star-like glimmers deep below.
“But I can give you another answer,” he said with his back to her.
Lillian raised her head, her eyes fixed on his back.
Jiang Ming turned around, leaning against the window frame. The backlight made his features slightly blurry, but his eyes shone brilliantly in the shadows.
“Lilian Vesemir,” he said word by word, his tone almost like a judgment. “Your Majesty, my student, my former lover — “
He paused.
“If you really want to know the answer to that question…”
“Then prove it with the rest of your life.”
Lillian’s body jolted.
“Not as the Empress of the Holy Moon Empire, not as a Penitent burdened with 100 years of guilt, and not even as someone Jiang Ming once knew.”
He walked back to her, crouched down, and met her eyes.
“But as Lillian herself.”
“Go and make up for the choices you didn’t dare make 100 years ago. Go and change the rules you knew were unjust but could only compromise with. Become the Lillian who, during a vote in The Council, would flip the entire meeting table just so a slave could get an extra piece of Black Bread every week.”
His voice was soft, yet it hammered into the depths of Lillian’s soul.
“Prove it to yourself. Prove it to those people walking through the smog wearing masks. Prove it to… me.”
Jiang Ming reached out. He didn’t touch her, but held his hand in the air as if displaying something invisible.
“Once you use the rest of your life to strip the name ‘Lillian’ of the labels ‘Empress’ and ‘Betrayer’ and rewrite it into another story — “
He paused, his lips curling into a faint, almost invisible arc.
“Then, I will tell you the answer.”
Lillian stared at him blankly, looking at the hand suspended in the air and the man before her who was both familiar and strange.
“You’ve changed,” she murmured.
“We’ve both changed,” Jiang Ming admitted frankly. “That’s the point, isn’t it? Whether the Jiang Ming of 100 years ago hated the Lillian of 100 years ago, and how the current me views the current you, are two completely different questions.”
He withdrew his hand and stood up.
“So, Lillian, I’m handing this question back to you.”
Outside the window, the sea of clouds began to swirl slowly, forming a massive vortex with the study at its center. The dream was ending.
“Use the rest of your life to write your answer,” Jiang Ming said finally. “When I feel it’s ready to be graded…”
He smiled.
“I will personally tell you what score you received on this question.”
The moment he finished speaking, the study began to collapse.
The pages of the books on the shelves flew out, turning into golden specks of light. The mahogany desk melted into a flowing amber liquid. The sea of clouds outside collapsed into a swirling gate of light.
Lillian felt herself falling.
But in the last moment of her fall, she reached out and grabbed Jiang Ming’s wrist.
She held on tight, just as tight as when she had grabbed his collar in the dungeon 100 years ago.
“Fine,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I’ll write it.”