Kovishik clutched the slip of paper, a subtle pain showing on his face.
"Looks like she's very angry?" the valet ventured. "Maybe she thinks you refusing to come downstairs to see her was a slight—"
Kovishik shook his head weakly and murmured, so quietly that almost only he could hear, "...You don't understand."
He slowly walked over to a chair, his expression turning vacant again. He pressed the note Hesta had left against his chest and bent over, his forehead pressed tightly to the tabletop, as though something had pierced his heart.
A poem swirled through his mind, like flowing water, like molten lava.
"Hello, can you hear the faint sound on the right side of the table?
"Don't think you'll finish writing these lines—I'm here, and you dare remain unmoved?
"Are you going to bully me again, replaying what happened last time—claiming you didn't see these hands, didn't see my hands and eyes?
"Your place is bright, and ordinary.
"Don't drive me out of the house, beneath that suffocating arch bridge,
"Where the filthy river is about to freeze over." (1)
His breathing gradually grew ragged, and several tears even fell to the floor.
Kovishik had no other choice. A thought crashed into his heart like thunder: Praise heaven—you were alone with the woman you loved for the first time. (2)
He suddenly thought of Mei Sinan's gray-blue eyes again. For nearly the past week, he had been brooding over them—so Hesta's first compliment about his eyes had not been because she truly appreciated their beauty, but because she had seen another person's reflection in them...
But at that moment, Kovishik suddenly saw it from another angle: if he was truly nothing more than a reflection to her, then why was he the one standing beside Hesta now, rather