BOOK 9. Zhao Yunlan is a private investigator who will accept almost any case as long as it pays, and when he finds a client's lost cat, they ask him to look into their friend's memory loss but he refuses. Shen Wei is an architect and after he mee...
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The artist assumed that there would be consequences to his direct action but this ... it was too severe. The powers-at-be were making everyone else suffer for something that they had no control over and he promised while on his knees, that he would never interfere again, just let them be happy, be themselves. He had watched them first-hand and seen the pain, the love, the heartache, and the effect they had on everyone around them. They never knew who or what he was and he was treated with kindness and welcomed even in the middle of their pain, and he begged,
"Please hear me, I will do whatever you ask. If you want me to paint, I will. If you ask me to stop, I will. If you want to take my spirit life away, take it. If you want to turn me into a mindless human, do it. I won't complain, but leave them Hope."
The artist's voice faded and who knows if he was even heard.
Yunlan's alarm sounded and he moaned loudly, while mentally he was firing the clock across the room and hitting the opposite wall, while watching it disintegrate into pieces, but instead he reached out and switched it off. What was he doing today? No cats to find, maybe someone unexpected will appear with some unbelievable story and he'll launch himself into another extraordinary adventure, and he felt his eyes water while his inner voice warned him not to go down that road.
Breakfast was bland but it was food, he still had to eat and take nourishment, even if his circumstances had changed. Wei would be annoyed with him if he didn't... and he felt the dampness return to his eyes. Why did he even set the alarm? But the inner voice kept telling him that things will get better and he left for work.
Guo Ying was like a robot, he'd been following the same pattern every day for almost two years. He arose, washed, dressed and went to the attic to look at the paintings. The four windows in the ceiling were now a carbon copy of the old library mosaic glass roof many years ago and there were three paintings. The original one called The Fire of Love, bought from Chu's gallery, the cryptic one which was there before there battle at the old castle, and this one. A perfect likeness of Yunlan holding a very distinctive ebony half mask while a tear paused half way down the side of his face. Ying always believed in the appearance of the portraits, that one day he would see a new one but not today, and he sadly left to join everyone else for breakfast.
No one was smiling at her table which seemed like the normal thing every morning and Ava hated it, she was determined to stay aloof from the sadness, someone had to, and as long as she didn't age, she had hope. It meant that he was still alive somewhere, if she had woken up with grey hair overnight, then she still would have nothing to worry about because she knew that she'd be dead before lunch with rapid ageing. The only thing that did bring her mood down was when Yunlan had left to return to his own house which was closer to his office for work, but even then she tried to see the positive. There was less chance of him crashing his beautiful red four by four.
