The days that followed the Mid-Autumn Festival felt thinner, as if time itself had grown fragile—stretched between hope and fear. Wenyan moved through the village like a man walking on silk thread, careful not to leave footprints, careful not to let the urgency in his chest show on his face.
Xu Lianfang's message had been clear: her spring wedding was not a wish—it was a sentence. And their time was no longer infinite.
She wanted to run.
Wenyan had spent his whole life grounded in ink and scrolls, in metaphors and the slow rhythm of teaching. He was not a revolutionary. He had never raised a sword or broken a law. But now, each time he looked at the pendant she gave him, he found himself entertaining impossible thoughts.
He had already crossed one line: loving her.
Was it such a leap to cross another?
The next message from Lianfang came hidden in the folds of Meixiang's sash, as usual. But this one was not a poem.
It was a map.
Delicate and precise, drawn in fine charcoal, it showed the layout of the Xu estate—courtyards, guard rotations, a side gate that remained unlocked during market hours. It was labeled with elegant symbols, each one unmistakably hers. A scholar's hand.
And beneath it, a single line:
"I will meet you under the willow by the east wall, two nights before the Lantern Farewell."
That was less than three weeks away.
Wenyan sat with the map spread before him, his hands pressed against the table as if to keep the earth steady. His breath came in slow, deliberate gulps.
It was no longer poetry.
This was real.
He began to prepare—not loudly, not clumsily, but with quiet purpose.
He visited an old friend in the village outskirts, a retired carpenter who once traveled north with the army as a supply hand. Wenyan asked about roads—safe ones, quiet ones. About crossing rivers under starlight. About inns that didn't ask for names.
He sold the lacquered inkstone his father had left him, and one of the calligraphy scrolls that hung in his study. The buyer, a merchant from Suzhou, didn't know what he was purchasing. Only that it was old. Valuable.
Wenyan accepted the silver in silence.
He packed it away with two spare robes, dried fruit, and a single worn copy of The Classic of Poetry, annotated with his own notes in the margins—he didn't need it, but he couldn't leave it behind. It felt like memory.
Every evening, he returned to the garden and traced the escape again in his mind.
Every evening, his hand found the pendant at his chest.
The night finally came, dressed in deep velvet and wind.
Wenyan moved like a shadow, slipping through narrow paths, past the village walls, and down into the trees behind the Xu estate. The moon was high but shrouded by clouds—grace, perhaps.
He reached the east wall and waited beneath the willow, its long branches swaying like fingers in prayer.
She came just past the hour of the rat.
No veil. No pearls. Only a plain robe of sea-gray silk, her hair braided in a single line down her back.
"You're here," she whispered.
"You doubted me?"
She didn't smile this time. Her eyes were too full.
"I've never been this afraid," she said.
"Good," Wenyan said. "That means it matters."
They stood close, too close for caution, their fingers brushing and trembling in the dark.
"I've left a note," she said. "It won't stop them from chasing us, but it will slow them. They'll think I went toward the canal. We'll head south, along the tea roads. There's a monastery near the hills of Wuyuan—they shelter travelers."
Wenyan nodded. "I have silver. Food. And a name we can borrow if we need one."
Lianfang looked at him for a long moment, then lifted her hand to his cheek.
"I thought love was a cage," she whispered. "Something beautiful you admired from afar. But you taught me it can be a door."
He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. "Then let's walk through it."
They didn't speak again. They climbed the garden wall, one after the other, hearts pounding in sync.
Behind them, the Xu estate slumbered under lantern light and the illusion of order.
Ahead of them, the world unfolded like a blank scroll—wild, uncertain, and waiting.
As they disappeared into the night, the wind carried a final whisper through the willow branches.
A name unspoken.
A vow unbroken.
And a love that refused to kneel.