Are You

When Zhaowan woke up, the first thing she saw was not the ghostly horrors she had imagined, but a faint yet remarkably steady light.

It was a brass oil lamp on the bedside table.

The wick had formed a tiny bloom, and the flame showed a near-silent orange-yellow hue. The smell of the lamp oil was peculiar — not the pungent odor of ordinary kerosene, nor the heavy fragrance of the precious agarwood in the Yin family's main hall, but a bitter, herbal scent like crushed medicinal herbs after a deep snow in the mountains.

She propped herself up to sit.

The bed beneath her was alarmingly soft — a texture built from fine velvet and down, utterly different from the hard plank bed she had slept on for nineteen years in the side courtyard. This softness brought her no comfort; instead, it felt like a gaping mouth, giving her the illusion that she might be swallowed at any moment.

The room had no windows.

Or rather, the place where a window should have been was heavily covered by thick, deep purplish-red velvet curtains, not letting even a sliver of moonlight through. This sealed space made the air feel thick, as if time itself had stopped flowing here.

Zhaowan looked down at her hand.

The vermilion mark on her hand had lost its burning pain, leaving only a faint red trace, like a scar from an old wound, yet faintly radiating a lively vitality.

She instinctively touched her sleeve.

The pin was still there.

The bloodstains under her fingernails had dried, a small dark patch, reminding her that the struggle in the black carriage last night was not a dream.

"Ding —"

As she sat up, a small copper bell hanging at the head of the bed gave a crisp ring.

The bell sounded particularly jarring in the extreme silence, like a pebble thrown into a calm lake. Zhaowan immediately froze, her eyes fixed on the heavy black wooden door.

Less than half a cup of tea's time.

"Creak —"

The door was pushed open.

A gust of air colder than the room rushed in with the person pushing the door.

Zhaowan instinctively pulled the corner of the blanket tighter, shrinking back until her back hit the cold bed frame. She looked up, and at that moment, her gaze collided with a pair of unfathomable eyes.

The newcomer was very tall.

He wore a black silk robe, its collar slightly open, revealing a section of collarbone paler than ivory. The candlelight cast his shadow from behind, stretching it long and thin on the floor, like a cage about to close.

This was Qi Ye.

Last night, outside the carriage, she had only seen a pair of gray-white eyes; now, under steady light, she finally saw his full appearance.

His features were deep and almost harsh, with a high nose bridge and lips as thin as a leaf frozen in late autumn. Those gray-white pupils had now regained a kind of suppressed calm, but the cold emanating from them still made every breath feel like being cut by a blade.

Qi Ye did not approach.

He stopped about five steps from the bed, a position right at the edge of the lamplight, half his body hidden in darkness, the other half outlined by the orange flame, a cold and sharp silhouette.

He did not speak. Instead, he tilted his head slightly, his eyes scanning Zhaowan's face, as if inspecting a cargo that had arrived three hundred years late, or searching for some long-lost, insignificant trace.

——

The silence in the room lasted a long time.

Only the occasional "crackle" from the oil lamp reminded that this was not a still painting.

Zhaowan felt her neck stiffening.

In the nineteen years of living with the Yin family, she had learned how to survive under oppression, how to suppress her presence. But before Qi Ye, this suppression seemed useless. What he gave off was not oppression, but "indifference" — the way he looked at her was not like looking at a living person, but rather as if through her flesh and skin, at some ethereal shadow.

Finally, Qi Ye moved.

He turned and walked to the pear-wood table in the center of the room. On it lay a black lacquer box.

He extended his long, pale hand, his fingertips lightly caressing the edge of the box.

"Click."

The lacquer box was opened.

He took out a roll of yellowed parchment. The paper had become brittle, with fine traces of moth-eaten edges — the indelible gnaw marks of time.

Qi Ye slowly unrolled the parchment.

His movements were strangely slow, with an almost morbid ritualism.

Zhaowan stared at the parchment.

She recognized the vermilion seal on the closure.

Qi Ye stared at the words on the parchment for a long time, so long that Zhaowan thought he would turn into a stone statue in the lamplight.

"You are not your sister."

He spoke.

His voice was lower than last night, with a sandpaper-like texture, sending a slight chill through the air.

Zhaowan's fingers gripping the blanket tightened abruptly.

What must come will come.

"My name is Yin Zhaowan."

She spoke her name. Her voice was somewhat hoarse but extremely calm. This was the plan she had conceived last night in the carriage. She would not beg for mercy, because she knew that in the world of vampires, begging was the cheapest and most useless thing.

"I am the second young lady of the Yin family. The marriage registry bears my name."

Qi Ye let out a low, short laugh.

There was no joy in that laugh, only a cold absurdity at being repeatedly mocked by fate.

"Registry?"

He turned his head, his gaze like fire, locking onto Zhaowan's eyes.

"What's written on it means nothing to me."

Holding the parchment, he slowly took a step closer to the bed.

As he approached, a scent of cool sandalwood, as if stored in an ice cellar for three thousand years, rushed over, instantly overwhelming all of Zhaowan's senses.

"Three hundred years ago, I wrote this blood covenant before that person's tombstone."

He raised his hand, his finger tracing heavily across the yellowed paper. "At that time, Beiping wasn't yet called Beiping. At that time, the Yin ancestors were just a down-and-out scholar in Jiangnan."

He took another step closer, leaning forward, his cold face enlarging before Zhaowan.

"The person destined by the covenant had her mark."

His slender fingers shot out, clutching Zhaowan's wrist.

Zhaowan instinctively tried to break free, but his strength was astonishing; his pale hand was like an iron clamp, locking onto her bones.

Qi Ye turned her wrist over.

Under the lamplight, the faint red, spider lily-shaped fingerprint was now emitting a weak, almost transparent red light.

It was pulsing.

In time with Zhaowan's heartbeat, one beat, then another.

Qi Ye looked at the mark, and his originally gray-white pupils silently flooded with a layer of dark red.

That was the color of blood.

——

Zhaowan felt a strange tingling sensation from her wrist.

It was not pain, but an itch like thousands of tiny electric currents threading through her blood vessels.

Qi Ye stared at the mark, his breathing seeming to become heavier.

Then, he made a move that made all the blood in Zhaowan's body freeze.

He lowered his head.

His lips were less than an inch from her wrist.

Zhaowan could feel the cold, chilling breath from his lips.

"Yin, Zhao, Wan."

He spoke her name again.

This time, his voice had less sarcasm and more of a deep, almost self-muttering bewilderment.

"Who gave you this name?"

"It was..." Zhaowan's throat was dry. "It was given by my grandmother on her deathbed three months ago."

Qi Ye's grip on her wrist tightened abruptly.

Zhaowan couldn't help but let out a soft cry.

"Three months ago?"

Qi Ye raised his head, his reddening eyes fixed on her.

"No... that's not right."

He used his other hand to undo the top button of his shirt.

Beneath the pale collarbone, on skin that had seen no sunlight for years, there was a strikingly identical spider lily pattern.

It was a scar.

An old scar, already showing a silvery-white sheen, deeply embedded in the flesh.

"Three hundred years ago, when that woman died in my arms."

His voice became ethereal and distant, as if speaking through the fog of three centuries. "With her last bit of strength, she bit her own fingertip and pressed this mark onto my collarbone and this parchment."

He released Zhaowan's wrist.

His body appeared somewhat dejected in the lamplight, yet radiated an extreme, suffocating aggressiveness.

"Her name was Wan Niang. A Jiangnan embroiderer. A woman who left no trace in any genealogy or history book for three hundred years."

He looked at Zhaowan again, his eyes carrying a madness she could not name — both hatred and intense longing.

"The Yin family told me that this life, you would return."

"But why..."

He reached out again, pinching her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.

"Why are you just a 'substitute' whose name was only given three months ago?"

——

Zhaowan felt a sharp pain in her chin.

But her mind became exceptionally clear at that moment.

Wan Niang.

The woman who left no trace in the genealogy.

The blood covenant from three hundred years ago.

And her grandmother's dying words: "Don't let him recognize the wrong person."

"Perhaps..."

Zhaowan stared into Qi Ye's eyes and spoke slowly, word by word. "That name was not given for 'me'."

Qi Ye's brow furrowed deeply.

"But for 'that soul'."

Zhaowan continued, her voice echoing in the sealed room, carrying a fatalistic resonance that pierced the heart.

"Grandma knew you would come. She knew you were looking for someone called 'Zhaowan'. So, on her deathbed, she gave me this name."

"She wasn't giving me a title. She was giving me..."

She paused, the corner of her mouth lifting in a self-mocking yet fearless arc.

"A mark for you to recognize the wrong person."

The air in the room seemed to be drained in an instant.

Qi Ye did not speak.

The deep red in his pupils rapidly faded, replaced by a deeper desolation that threatened to turn everything to ashes.

He released his hand.

"Recognize the wrong person?"

He turned his back to Zhaowan and walked back to the pear-wood table.

He rolled up the parchment again and tied it with a black ribbon. His movements had a subtle tremor that was hard to detect.

"Three hundred years."

He said in a low voice, the icy sandalwood scent locking around her with his breath.

"If I have recognized the wrong person, the price is something you can never afford in this life."

He picked up the lacquer box and walked toward the door. A second before pushing it open, he stopped. Without turning back.

"You are not allowed to leave this room, and you are not allowed..." He turned his face sideways, the candlelight casting an extremely cold curve on his chiseled profile. "... to wash off the mark on your hand. Since your grandmother gave it to you, you owe me an explanation more resounding than a name."

The door closed. The heavy black wooden door sealed Zhaowan completely in this airtight room.

She collapsed against the headboard, looking down at the spider lily fingerprint on her hand. In the darkness, it still pulsed faintly, flickering on and off, like a heart slowly growing inside her, belonging to another.

And the rhythm of that heart kept tempting her to push open that blood-colored door leading to three hundred years ago.