The Stolen Lover

Untitled Episode 8

Not long after Brother Nan sent his message, Scholar replied: "After seeing the message you posted for me, I'm filled with regret too. If I could start over, I'd know how to change myself. Thank you."

Brother Nan glanced at it and replied casually, "When men and women fall in love, they're all preoccupied with moving themselves first. No one is born knowing how to resonate with another—that's a lesson learned through too much pain. You haven't even been through ten relationships, so don't call it heartbreak. At best, it's a miscalculation. And stop wallowing in self-pity, brother. She can't see it, and even if she could, it wouldn't matter. If she could walk out the door, she could face your pain."

Xiu Cai sat alone at home, his mind blank. He too pondered what he was truly missing.

Brother Nan remembered Feifei hadn't replied yet and sent another message: "My wife and I are having a little spat. I'm trying to smooth things over."

Fei Fei applied a face mask while trying to look both amused and stiff. She loved hearing Nan Ge express his care for her. With a tight expression, she typed a few words: "Got it. Kneel and bow out." She tossed her phone aside and hummed a tune as she went back to her chores.

After submitting his first assignment, Brother Nan’s confusion about Xiao Yan hadn’t lessened. He felt his thoughts were only one-third in sync with Li Xiao Yan’s—maybe even less. Right now, he might be more eager than Xiu Cai to receive Li Xiao Yan’s reply.

The bar was bustling as usual, filling up quickly. With only a dozen tables, Brother Nan had to give up his seat to later arrivals. After exchanging a few words with acquaintances, he decided to step outside for a stroll—better than drinking himself into a state where he might lose his composure if Xiao Yan replied.

The afternoon's walk around the lake had stirred a dull ache in Brother Nan's knees—an old injury from childhood long-distance training. Any increased exertion sent this old friend knocking. He paced back and forth along a path near Jīmíng Temple. Below the temple lay the famous Cherry Blossom Avenue. Come spring, petals would drift like rain in the breeze, drawing flocks of young couples eager to capture moments of their fingers intertwined against the backdrop of blue skies and blossoms. Watching them, Brother Nan couldn't help but recall his own youth—those days when his white sneakers were perpetually caked in spring mud.

After pacing up and down the slope twice, his body warmed slightly, easing the ache in his knees. Just as he lit a cigarette and sat on the steps to rest, a message from Xiaoyan arrived.

"You haven't done anything wrong. In fact, you've been better than I ever imagined. But every time I immerse myself in the security and happiness you create, the blue sky and white clouds twist into wrinkled hospital gowns, suddenly covering my head and blocking my nose and mouth. Yes, I must peel off this skin to be worthy of loving you. But you wouldn't like something so bloody. Sincerity is another kind of recklessness. I hate high heels—they clack backward, striking the midnight bell like two nails driving my hands onto a cross. Love tightens its noose, choking everyone until they gasp for breath, unable to cry out—until I see all the light pouring in. All of it, for no window is smaller than a pupil. White and blue may be far apart, or perhaps not so far. Between you and me lies an unpeelable layer of red. The lit cigarette burns redder than the sun. Could it be extinguished in my eyes? I hear autumn within the walls, you stepping on gravel paths strewn with ginkgo leaves. I hear the wind, the water, your laughter, the quacking of tiny wild ducks. If fate could be framed, perhaps it could be hammered out anew. Why do you never speak? I can no longer hear you."

After reading the message, Brother Nan felt a pain unlike any he'd known before. It was as if his own self from a different dimension was being slaughtered, that inexplicable agony piercing through dimensions to strike him directly. Unfathomable and indecipherable, it could still pierce a person through. He recalled hearing a 60s English song in some context. He didn't know the singer or the meaning of the lyrics, yet was instantly suffocated by its oppressive weight. Within that suffocation, all reality shattered into isolated fragments—bricks and plaster clashed on the walls, floating dust particles each wrapped around seven distinct scents in his hair. Water droplets from the faucet cursed loudly as they fell, glass slicing through his arm in slow-motion frames. Everything froze mid-air as violent sounds shattered simultaneously—except the pitiful wails of mercy, which remained voiceless...

This twisted empathy was awakened by Xiaoyan's mutterings and the void he'd once fallen into. He felt his senses disintegrating, as if a spell were tearing his pieced-together body apart piece by piece. Each limb possessed its own life, while he himself was fading away. If this process didn't stop, he'd soon vanish entirely.

Nan Ge sat frozen on the steps for a full five minutes. Only when his cigarette burned down to the filter did he snap back to reality. He couldn't describe whether those five minutes felt as fleeting as a second or as endless as primordial chaos. It simply felt like the exhaustion after a spasm, his entire body drenched in cold sweat.

Brother Nan relit his cigarette, emptying his mind until the sensation of wind piercing his body returned to tangible reality. The mountain path lay deserted, devoid of light, like a graveyard where the city buried its fleeting glories, awaiting the uninvited arrival of skeletal remains.

Nan Ge wasn't a ghost or a spirit. He simply possessed an intensely morbid empathy. The pain felt by another would multiply geometrically within his own heart. The love poured into a single person would make him feel like he was floating on the sea at dusk. For those he cared about, he would unconsciously adopt their habits. If she looked into his eyes while resting her chin on her right hand, he would instantly become a mirror. This likely stems from years of creative habit. His mind must hold a tangible person—like when he writes of clasping a woman's hand, he vividly imagines its warmth, the smoothness of her skin, the size of her palm, the pressure of his grip. Only then does he discard that process, presenting a woman's hand directly. This empathy both nourished and tormented him. To write of someone being hurt, he had to endure that pain a thousand times over in his own heart. He had always tried to seal off this feeling, or at least shut it away as tightly as possible, leaving only a sliver open. Yet it was precisely this sliver that Xiaoyan tore wide open. Like a dam bursting, the torrent surged down the mountainside, devastating everything in its path. In that instant, he knew he would never love again.

In their first true clash, the moment the ice blade flashed, Nan Ge was defeated. This was no woman to be looked down upon. She was too real—a purity untouched by dust. Nan Ge had thought he wielded a steel blade that could sever a throat at the slightest touch. Yet before her authenticity, the character he’d constructed with false emotions crumbled like a burnt stick—collapsing at the slightest touch.

Nan Ge came to his senses and began to dissect Xiao Yan's words phrase by phrase. He needed to rewind to the very beginning of Xiao Yan's encounter with the scholar, starting anew to piece everything together. He had to give Xiao Yan a genuine scholar and find a real Xiao Yan for himself. Nan Ge was not one to admit defeat easily—accepting fate was one thing, but conceding defeat was another.

"You haven't done anything wrong. In fact, you've done better than I ever imagined." Hmm, this sentence was the final straw on the trap, yet she spoke the truth. You would willingly step on it, and she knew you would.

"But every time I immerse myself in the solidity and perfection you create, the blue sky and white clouds twist into wrinkled hospital gowns, suddenly covering my head, blocking my nose and mouth." On the surface, she feels a guilt that blinds her and suffocates her. But whether the sickly distortion of blue skies and white clouds is metaphor or literal vision remains unclear here.

"Yes, I must peel off this skin to be worthy of loving you. But you wouldn't like something so bloody. Sincerity is another kind of recklessness." Though separated by a comma, the meaning should be understood here: this skin is sincerity—something she cannot express honestly, for to speak it would be to inflict harm. What exactly it is remains unclear.

"I hate high heels, thudding backward like midnight bells, like two nails pinning my hands to a cross. Love tightens its grip, choking everyone until they can't breathe, can't cry out—until I see all the light pouring in, all of it, for no window is smaller than a pupil." This passage is entirely abstract. She offers only sensations, not events. It could be real, or it could be an illusion.

White and blue may be far apart, or perhaps not so far. Between you and me lies an indelible layer of red—smoke lit redder than the sun. Could it be extinguished in my eyes? The earlier blue and white remain undefined, but here they reappear to contrast with the previously mentioned red—the unspeakable words. Thus this metaphor is real, for one cannot compare illusion with illusion. Hence the hospital gown is real. The cigarette appears only once, symbolizing the price of her sincerity, suggesting it too is real.

"I hear autumn within the walls, you tread on gravel paths strewn with ginkgo leaves, hear the wind, hear the water, hear your laughter, hear the quacking of tiny wild ducks. If fate could be framed, perhaps it could be hammered out anew. Why do you never speak? I can no longer hear you." This line should be read with nuance: autumn within the walls, the picture frame, hearing and not hearing. She only mentioned sound in the part about high heels, but she wasn't just talking about sound—she was also talking about light and color. "Why don't you speak?" is a command, connected to what follows. It's her desire to hear words, but she never got them. "Fate can be framed" echoes the photo mentioned earlier in the message. "Knocked out" likely refers to the scholar's book...

Brother Nan strained to find a clear thread or logic within this seemingly chaotic expression. Xiaoyan described her experiences and expectations through magnified sensations drawn from both reality and illusion. After Brother Nan, under the scholar's name, extended an invitation to understand her, she laid bare the part of herself most in need of interpretation—both by others and by herself. This wasn't the madness of a patient; it was the key to another door.

Nan Ge wasn't entirely confident in his own assessment. This was merely one of the methodologies he frequently employed. These so-called "routines" had their persuasive merits, yet even the most gifted fortune-teller couldn't predict everything with absolute clarity. He needed more evidence. He needed a counterattack.

Brother Nan resolved to make his judgment based on what he held as certain—what could not be disgraced—and launch a fresh assault. At this moment, the matter extended far beyond Xiu Cai.