Extra 5. Pei Xueqing × Shen Yuance - Zhuang Zhou Dreaming of a Butterfly (2)

As the sun slowly descended from its zenith toward the west, the pavilion was bathed in a golden-red glow at sunset. The entire scene shimmered with an ethereal haze.

Zhuyue had already urged her mistress countless times: “Young Master Shen must be having too much fun at the gambling den—he’s surely forgotten today was the day to change his bandages.”

Pei Xueqing, however, remained quietly immersed in her medical text. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he wouldn’t break their agreement for the sake of mere amusement.

Ever since Shen Yuance agreed to come to the pavilion for his wound care, he had shown up every time on the dates she specified. Though he always extended his arm indifferently, waiting just long enough for her to finish before leaving, seemingly impatient and eager to avoid wasting even a moment on her chatter—still, if he were truly so addicted to gambling or so untrustworthy, how could he repeatedly pull himself away from the pleasures of the gambling den to keep their appointments?

Moreover, based on the condition of his wound, the intervals between their meetings varied: initially every other day, then every three days, and later every five days. A person who appeared indifferent to everything would not have remembered such changing schedules so clearly. He was far from the careless, negligent figure he pretended to be.

“Besides,” Pei Xueqing said softly, “even if I return home, I’ll only be reading books. It’s the same here. Let’s wait a little longer.”

She continued reading, waiting until the sun dipped below the horizon, the evening clouds faded, and the light grew too dim to read by. Then, she asked Zhuyue to light the lamps.

After lighting the lamps, Zhuyue pleaded anxiously: “Miss, we really should go back. If we miss the city gates locking for the night, it will be troublesome.”

“It takes two hours by carriage to return to the city. We can stay until three hours before the gates close. If he comes late into the night and I’m not here, it would be my fault. I’ll wait until the last possible moment—I need to know for sure whether he won’t come before I leave.”

“Do all you scholars have to be so stubborn?” A young male voice suddenly rang out nearby. Pei Xueqing turned her head and saw the elegantly dressed youth stepping lazily across the wooden bridge toward them.

His steps seemed unhurried, as though he were strolling casually. But when he drew closer, she clearly noticed the rise and fall of his chest—he had rushed here, likely running part of the way.

Pei Xueqing quickly stood and poured him a bowl of tea.

Shen Yuance, apparently very thirsty, didn’t ignore her courtesy this time as he usually did. He took the bowl and drank it down in one gulp. “You waited all afternoon without even sending someone to check on me?”

“I was worried that coming to find you might cause trouble for you,” she explained while pouring him another bowl of tea. “I almost left just now. If you’re delayed in the future, please send word. No matter how late, I’ll wait.”

“You really want more people to know about our meetings here?”

No wonder he always came alone, without even his closest attendants.

Despite his apparent roughness and disregard for propriety, he was actually thoughtful and meticulous when it mattered.

Pei Xueqing opened her medical kit and invited him to sit on the balustrade, just as she had done during their previous sessions, to change his bandages.

Shen Yuance glanced down at her hands as she worked. “Miss Pei is quite patient, isn’t she? You don’t even ask why I’m half a day late.”

“You must have had something important to do.”

“How do you know I didn’t simply forget—or deliberately toy with you?”

“You’re not that kind of person.”

“Heh, you really think I’m a good guy?” Shen Yuance crossed his legs and began shaking one foot, adopting his usual disheveled, unruly demeanor once again.

To be honest, if she didn’t already know his true nature, seeing him slouching like this, looking so uncouth, she might have found him somewhat off-putting.

He seemed relatively restrained around her, though not particularly friendly. At least he hadn’t said anything too offensive. She had heard stories of how insufferable he could be toward Princess Yongying—truly vile, with a mouth incapable of uttering anything decent.

As Pei Xueqing applied the medicine, she hesitated for a moment before speaking: “Young Master Shen, since I already know your secret, you don’t need to put on those forced airs or say things you don’t mean around me.”

Shen Yuance turned his head to look at her.

“You’re already burdened enough by pretending and lying to others. My intention in treating your wounds is to help you, but if I force you to continue deceiving me, I’ll feel terrible about it. Earlier, I didn’t ask why you were late today because I didn’t want you to waste energy fabricating excuses.”

“Our meeting was born out of misfortune, but truthfully, I want to get to know the real Young Master Shen.” After days of hesitation, Pei Xueqing finally voiced what was on her mind.

Shen Yuance’s gaze flickered slightly, and the leg he’d been shaking stilled.

After she finished dressing his wound, she looked up directly at him: “If I tell people that Young Master Shen is skilled in martial arts, no one will believe me. And if I say that you’re actually courageous, kind, and considerate, they’ll believe it even less. So you don’t need to worry about being yourself around me.”

Shen Yuance stared at her for a long moment, as if hearing some amusing joke. He glanced away. “Why are you making up all these fancy words for me?”

“Young Master Shen, every time you leave here, you don’t immediately depart. Instead, you wait until I board my carriage, then follow my carriage back into the city, don’t you?”

Knowing that Shen Yuance didn’t want his injury known, she only brought along a coachman and her personal maid. On the journey back from the outskirts through the mountains, she still felt a lingering unease after encountering that wolf. But ever since she discovered that Shen Yuance followed behind her carriage on horseback, she no longer felt afraid.

Caught red-handed, Shen Yuance seemed momentarily speechless. He tugged his sleeve down and stood up, walking toward the exit: “Then watch closely today how I leave.”

Pei Xueqing watched his retreating figure, feeling a pang of disappointment that he still refused to open up to her. Lowering her head, she silently began packing up her medical kit.

After dawdling for a while, she suddenly heard the sound of footsteps returning.

“If you already knew, what did it mean when I lingered here last time, reading for two hours?”

Startled, Pei Xueqing raised her head to see Shen Yuance striding back into the pavilion, his expression accusatory. It seemed his curiosity had finally overcome his carefully maintained façade.

She hesitated for a moment before answering honestly: “I just wanted to see if Young Master Shen would wait for me…”

“So the one deliberately playing games and making others wait is you, Miss Pei?”

“I—it’s just that I wanted to know what kind of person you really are. I’m sorry, Young Master Shen.” She bowed her head apologetically.

“I don’t even know what kind of person I am anymore.”

Pei Xueqing’s eyes shot up, catching a fleeting glimpse of loneliness in his gaze.

That self-deprecating “I don’t know” carried both a sigh and a bitter laugh.

She understood. In Chang’an, he probably didn’t have a single confidant. If a person wore a mask in front of everyone for long enough, the mask might as well become their true face.

Shen Yuance let out a sigh and gestured to the medical kit in her hands. “It’s already so late. Can you hurry up a bit?”

“Aren’t you the one who told me to watch you leave first?”

“Aren’t you the one who said I’m heroic, kind, and considerate?”

In the silence of their shared gaze, Pei Xueqing snapped back to reality, hurriedly packing up her things. Smiling, she said, “I’m almost done!”

Later, Pei Xueqing learned that on that day, Lady Shen had suffered a bout of her chronic migraines, and Shen Yuance couldn’t leave her side. He thought Pei Xueqing would have already given up waiting and gone home by the time his mother’s condition improved. After much deliberation, he decided to come and check anyway, thinking it was probably unnecessary. To his surprise, he found her still at the pavilion in the dark.

After that incident, Shen Yuance seemed to realize that she was someone who would stubbornly wait until the very last moment, and he never came late again.

He also seemed to accept that some truths about him were already out in the open and could no longer be hidden. He stopped deliberately putting on an aloof, carefree act or speaking with biting sarcasm. He no longer rushed off as soon as their meetings ended but instead lingered in the pavilion, resting or dozing off, sometimes chatting casually with her.

As they grew more familiar, Pei Xueqing discovered that when he wasn’t pretending, Shen Yuance wasn’t actually a prickly person at all. Like any ordinary young man, he was curious—asking her about the medicinal herbs she gathered in the mountains, the content of her medical books, and why she was interested in medicine.

Occasionally, he would play childish pranks on her, like bringing her a plant from outside and claiming it was a poisonous herb described in her medical texts. When she examined it seriously for a while, he teased her, saying, “Why waste time studying it? Just try it!” Then, to her horror, he popped the plant into his mouth and started chewing. It turned out to be nothing more than a common weed, utterly harmless.

There were moments when he grew serious too. Hearing about her mother’s poor health reminded him of his own biological mother, who had passed away from illness when he was young. He confessed that he no longer remembered what she looked like—not even in his dreams could he conjure her face.

Speaking of dreams, he digressed, recounting a strange recurring dream he’d had since childhood. In the dream, he was trudging through mud and rain at the border, enduring harsh training. His father appeared in the dream, training him like a ruthless instructor preparing a soldier for death-defying missions. But Shen Yuance felt that the person in the dream, though identical to him, wasn’t truly him.

She asked, “If your father wasn’t around, how did you learn martial arts?”

He replied, “I just memorized the techniques at the academy and practiced secretly at home. But practicing alone isn’t convenient—it’s hard to refine skills that way. That arrow I shot to save you that day really was a stroke of luck under pressure.”

Compared to wielding real swords and spears, he devoted more effort to studying military strategy.

“There are two kinds of generals,” he explained. “Those who lead from the frontlines and those who command from behind the scenes. If one doesn’t possess exceptional martial skills to become the former, being the latter isn’t so bad either.”

“So your ambition is to someday fight on the battlefield?” she asked.

“If the day comes when Hexi needs me, I’ll go without hesitation. But for now, my father handles everything in Hexi, and there hasn’t been any warfare. Even if I spend my entire life preparing, but never end up becoming a general, that wouldn’t be so bad either.”

On bright spring days, basking in the gentle breeze and warm sunlight, they chatted endlessly in the pavilion. Slowly, it seemed that he began to see her—the accidental witness to his hidden self—as his only friend in Chang’an. He opened up to her about things he had never shared with anyone else over the years.

The obedient, rule-abiding daughter of the prime minister and the troublemaking aristocrat who frequented gambling dens and cockfighting rings made for an unlikely pair of friends.

But this strange friendship had begun as an accident—and accidents always come to an end.

Shen Yuance’s wound gradually formed a scab and began to itch—a sign, as a healer, she recognized as evidence of impending recovery.

Once his wound healed completely, everything would return to normal. Their paths would no longer cross; she would retreat back into her secluded world, and he would continue his flamboyant, unruly ways.

No one would ever know that beneath his tough exterior lay a heart capable of kindness—and within it, aspirations as unyielding as stone.

As the days passed, she grew increasingly reluctant to let go but knew she had to honestly tell him: “Next time, we’ll check the scab. If all goes well, you won’t need to come to the pavilion anymore.”

Shen Yuance replied lightly, “Good. Finally, this ‘evidence’ will be gone.”

Her heart sank with melancholy, yet she never expected that just a few days later, she would find Shen Yuance hobbling into the pavilion, clutching his bleeding arm and grimacing in pain.

“I tripped on the way here. The scab broke open—does this mean the wound has to heal all over again?”