"..."
Daiyu saw Tanchun's dazed, devastated look in the pool and couldn't help letting out a soft sigh. She said nothing more.
Because, as someone who had been through it herself, she could more or less guess what her third younger sister was experiencing.
She had most likely fallen into the illusion within the mirror as well, facing a romantic trial in which some desire of her own had been magnified.
So Daiyu naturally said no more to persuade her. She merely moved her gaze away from Tanchun in silence and turned it back toward the rippling surface of the hot spring, letting her thoughts drift along with it once more.
"..."
To be honest, she really couldn't understand why, when she had looked into the Mirror of Romance and Illusion, she had seen such an absurd scene—yet one so vivid it felt as though she had lived through it herself.
The key point was—
She didn't seem to dislike it?!
At the time...
Within the illusion, red candles blazed high and music rang through the heavens. She, Lin Daiyu, wore a phoenix coronet and bridal robes, dressed as a bride. None of that was strange. What was strange was this: why had the one marrying her and bowing before the wedding altar with her been her master's fuzzy little bear, Tibbers, the very one her master almost never let leave her side and almost never allowed her to touch?
In other words...
The Mirror of Romance and Illusion was saying that she, Lin Daiyu, imagined a bear as the object of her romantic desires?
Th-That was impossible!
She was not even twelve years old yet. Even if girls in certain places married at twelve or thirteen, she had never once considered such romantic matters.
Yet now, that blasted mirror