Belief

It was just that the uncle who wasn't understood had stopped trying to open up.

He had also learned to hide what he felt.

But the figure that appeared now and then beneath the red maples in Siheyuan made it plain that his hopes had never faded—or even disappeared.

Xu Zizhen couldn't help sighing again. He murmured, "It'd be nice if she really were a monster."

"Hm?"

Zhuge Yun heard Xu Zizhen say something but couldn't make it out, and gave a puzzled hum.

"The Missy my uncle met—"

Xu Zizhen looked up and smiled at them. "It'd be nice if she really were a monster."

Huh?

The others didn't immediately understand why Xu Zizhen had said that. They stared at him, a little dazed.

Xiao Xiao, however, had a vague understanding after his initial surprise.

"Then all the memories my uncle's held on to all these years would be real."

Xu Zizhen lowered his eyes to the teacup in front of him, rubbing a finger along its side. The chill against his fingertip reached his mind, clearing his thoughts.

They wouldn't be, as the rest of his family said, beautiful memories his uncle cherished that were nothing more than his own imagination.

"And then all those years my uncle spent waiting wouldn't have been for nothing."

There really would be a Missy like that in the world.

She had been with his uncle for a long time.

Then one day, she had simply left him.

If it had all been fake, wouldn't that make his uncle... terribly pitiful?

"Maybe one day, that Missy will remember the playmate she once had. She'll remember my uncle."

Xu Zizhen suddenly smiled, his expression brightening. "Then my uncle will get to see the Missy he's thought