【凯源】Mountains and Rivers [GCA2019X]

第五章 // Chapter 5

"The wind bell rings closely in time with my heartbeat

The letter is still longing for the journey it went through to bring an important piece of information from one to another

The loves I've seen are much too young to possess

You are the scenery I would like to return to"

When Junkai returned from the banquet to his house, it was already early morning / extremely late night. His mission was as well as failed, but it wasn’t much of a loss, just so long it didn’t fall into Japan’s hands, anything was better.

He also had a sense of faith in Yuan, since he didn’t seem very Japan-like, even though he had no proof that Yuan wasn’t Japanese.

(He secretly wondered if Yuan trusted him too, that was why he had just said his name like that, or if it was just all a plan to distract him again. Yuan, Wang Yuan, might not even be his real name.)

That night was much too thrilling, it was almost a shame when the guards burst in on him, lying with his back flat on the floor, seemingly having fainted. When they revived him, Junkai blinked dazedly for a while before pouring out how she had played with his feelings and even knocked him unconscious while committing her crimes.

“She’s… she’s a thief!” Junkai was so angry his body trembled with rage, and his eyes held hot tears from spilling forth.

He had always prided himself on his acting skills. The guards immediately bought his story and comforted him, calling his driver to go to the banquet to pick him up. It was only when he reached home that he realised his back was breaking out in a cold sweat. Perhaps it had been that his nerves were too tense for a long time, and he had only relaxed when they were fifty meters to his house, so he felt like his whole body was floating, as if he was stepping on air, levitating even. He felt so relaxed (tired?) the minute he reached home he threw himself onto his bed and fell asleep.

In his adrenaline-induced sleep, he had a very… new… dream.

In his dream, there was no war, no ice-cold refusals and beastlike fights. He dreamt of thousand-year-old snow-covered mountains melting when he touched them, iced-over logs of wood sprouting fresh green leaves, that everything was gentle and soft. He dreamt of a glittering spring, a misty summer, a dancing autumn and a winter where flowers grew and sparkled under the sun as snow drifted down.

He saw the hundred-year-old lake’s first ripple as the first peach blossom of a thousand years drifted to land on the glass-like surface, the pink petal settling into the water, and he asked him, why are you crying?

When he woke up, he found that it was he himself that was crying, that a patch of cloth on his pillow was soaked through.

A few days after the incident, Junkai went to Ma Shunyuan’s mansion to talk about business. On the front, Ma Shunyuan dealt in tobacco, but he was actually a under-table dealer in arms, weapons both military and not. He had already sold off quite a few national treasures, and in this year alone he already expanded his mansion by quite a few acres.

Junkai never had good feelings about this type of person, but it was his father’s wishes. He also needed a little bit of experience in this aspect of business dealings.

Ma was very warm to him, perhaps because he owed Junkai’s father his life and a great sum of money, perhaps because he always had a liking towards Junkai. “Junkai, you’re here, please sit! Would you like anything to drink? Right, I forgot to say, my son just came back from Korea. It’s been a long time since he’s been in Shanghai, I will have to ask you to help show my son around again, take care of him a bit.”