He blearily glanced over to see Nanyi sprawled beside his bed, her eyes bright and sparkling as if she had seen something incredible.
“Xie Queshan, the sun is about to come out!”
Xie Queshan closed his eyes again, his response dreamlike: “So what?”
“Get up quickly, didn’t we agree to watch the sunrise!”
Xie Queshan sleepily turned over. When did they agree to that? He suddenly hazily wondered what time it was—he could barely open his eyes. There was no sundial or water clock here, so how could she precisely wake up and catch the moment of sunrise?
Could it be that she had waited all night?
Thinking of this, he became somewhat alert.
Some morning light was already filtering through the window lattice like a sheet of crystalline floating golden powder. But the boat’s stern faced east, so the sunrise couldn’t be seen from inside the room.
Xie Queshan no longer resisted and let Nanyi pull him up.
“Come quickly!”
Seeing him get up, she ran out joyfully first, afraid of missing even a moment of sunrise, her footsteps squeaking on the floorboards.
Xie Queshan was caught up in her momentum unprepared, the corners of his mouth involuntarily lifting in a faint smile.
“Do you see it? The sun is about to leap from the river surface!”
Nanyi stood by the ship’s rail, pointing at the river scenery behind them.
Xie Queshan’s footsteps stopped. Just one more step and he could walk out of the room, but the iron chains on his hands were already stretched to their limit.
One more step outward and he could see the sunrise behind them. But it was precisely this one step that he couldn’t take.
Like an ominous portent, the dawn that had just broken instantly retreated back into night. The hope in his heart was extinguished once again. He knew it—everything in this world was preventing him from taking this step. These damned chains, this damned cage, this damned sun.
He raised his eyes to look at Nanyi, his gaze pitch-black and lifeless.
The smile on Nanyi’s face also froze. She had waited all night between sleeping and waking for the sunrise, yet she alone had overlooked this one thing.
It seemed she had done something wrong.
She wanted to pull him from darkness, but forgot he needed to cross an abyss. What if… he couldn’t cross over?
They looked at each other across a doorway, one standing in light, one standing in shadow, like a prophecy, like destiny.
Nanyi suddenly thought of something, her eyes brightening again: “Wait for me!”
She quickly ran into the room, took the bronze mirror from the table that was used for grooming, then ran back to the ship’s rail.
She was like a gust of wind, whooshing past Xie Queshan and whooshing back again. By the time Xie Queshan came to his senses, the girl had already nimbly climbed onto the ship’s rail, half her body leaning outward. She held the bronze mirror high, adjusting the angle bit by bit.
A dazzling ray of morning light refracted through the bronze mirror into Xie Queshan’s eyes. He instinctively squinted, then saw half of the rising sun in the mirror.
The other half of the sun was on her face.
Xie Queshan felt inexplicably shaken.
The boat was splitting, the river flowing backward. Against everything, everything in this world, there was someone who would risk her life to bring light to his eyes.