There was wind outside the window, and tree branches too.
Sunlight fell across his cheek. Zheng Qing watched the branches' shadows sway in the light, as though even the sunlight had been stirred into ripples by the breeze. Lying in the sunlight felt like lying in a warm spring, the gentle rays like softly undulating water.
He opened his mouth and bit into a mouthful of sunlight. It was soft and warm, like cotton candy fresh from the oven, except it lacked that sweet taste and was instead slightly bitter.
Zheng Qing knew that bitterness came from the residual potion left in his mouth.
Without thinking, a line from Tsvetaeva's poetry drifted through his mind—my veins are filled with sunlight instead of blood; alone, I face my own soul and feel the strangeness of life—though the original poem was not quite like that, only roughly similar in meaning.
Just like the private hospital room where he now lay, there was only him, all alone. Apart from his own soul and the sunlight outside the window, there was nothing else on which to pour out his feelings.
Today was already the seventh day since Zheng Qing had awakened from his coma.
Visitors and healers came and went from the ward. The sun rose and set outside the window. The only thing unchanged was Zheng Qing lying in bed, still unable to muster much magic and looking exceptionally weak.
That state left the young man somewhat irritable.
He let out a deep sigh, raised his head, and looked around at the familiar surroundings.
The ward was not large, about twenty square meters. Its furnishings were mainly white, simple and plain.
An exquisite lamp fixture was mounted on the ceiling overhead. Inside it, several white candles of varying heights burned slowly, their pale