10 - Snowy Mountain with a Peach Blossom Tree Volume II

Chapter 10: The book Snowy Mountain with a Peach Blossom Tree Volume II

When Ji Kai passed out after drinking the tea, I had imagined two scenarios: what might happen if the remedy was effective and what I should do if it was not. All would be good if he recovered his memories. But if he did not, then there was only one thing left to do.

"Alright, we've got to go," I grasped tightly around his wrist and attempted to drag him off the bed.

"Why?" Raising an eyebrow quizzically, Ji Kai pulled back his arm and did not budge.

Gritting my teeth and tightening my hold around his wrist and hand, I used whatever little strength that I have to pull him harder. "I'm bringing you to Liuyuan Village. We have other miracle doctors there."

"I'm not going." He continued to stay put stubbornly.

"Get up, get up. You have to come with me if you want to get well."

"I don't want to. You were the one who said that Doctor Jin is a proficient doctor, but he failed and now you want to abduct me?"

"If you don't cooperate, I will knock you out!"

Ji Kai froze and looked at me with surprise. I stared back at him without slackening my grip on him. We remained unmoving in this awkward deadlock, shooting daggers at each other.

"You dare to lay a finger on me?" he hissed under his breath as his eyes bored into me.

My fingernails dug into his skin in response to his challenge. But not hard enough to break his thick skin or cause any bleeding—just enough to imprint little white crescents.

Seeing that I was not going to give in, he moved first to break the impasse. He used his free hand to try to pry my hands off him and I felt my cheeks warm from the sudden physical contact. Taking advantage of my momentary distraction, Ji Kai successfully removed my left hand from his and flung it off. Catching me off guard, his sudden movement caused me to lose my balance. To avoid falling backwards, my right hand continued to clutched tightly around his wrist and I tugged on it for support. But what I did not expect was that as I struggled to regain my balance, Ji Kai rotated his wrist and grasped my forearm with his hand before pulling me towards him with a great force.

I stumbled forward and landed on him, my flushed face barely inches away from his chest. Lifting my chin slowly, our eyes met and I hurried to distance myself. "S-sorry," I stuttered and struggled to get to my feet. The whole time my heart rate was steadily increasing as the veins in my head pulsated rapidly.

Ji Kai continued to hold onto me, his gaze lingering on me. The roles were reversed as he was now refusing to let go. He stayed silent but the corners of his lips quirked up and his eyes glinted. My eyes widening in astonishment, I caught that brief expression which he quickly and expertly hid. Not wanting him to see my reddening face, I frowned and lifted my right leg before giving him a side kick in his abdomen and hopping backwards. Immediately, he released me and his hands clutched his stomach.

Wincing with a sharp gasp, he stared at me in disbelief. My brain finally caught up with my actions as guilt flooded my heart. Once again, I had acted without thinking.

"Sorry." I apologised, slapping my hand over my mouth. My shoe had left a faint grey mark. "I didn't mean to—did I dirty your clothes?"

"Why did you kick me?" Ji Kai rubbed his abdomen pitifully and shot me an accusatory look. "Do you have violent tendencies?"

"No," I said, crossing my arms and sticking my nose up in the air. "It was clearly self-defence."

He scoffed and leaned lazily against the bed frame. "Self-defence? You are a 'thief shouting thief'! You are the one who was trying to abduct me. I was being kind so that you won't fall backwards."

With a long sigh, I perched myself on a seat at the table, facing him. I suddenly thought of just abandoning him and returning to the Garden but the thought vanished as quickly as it surfaced. I could not return to the real world without him as my guide. I just wanted to go home.

"Ok." Overwhelmed by the current deadlock situation, I exhaled weakly and squeezed my eyes shut just as I felt my nose start to sour. "How about you tell me what we should do now?"

"What do you mean 'what we should do now'?" Came Ji Kai's nonchalant reply, a smile in his voice. "We can just live here together for the rest of our lives. After all, I already have you to tell me about my missing memories. Who needs to go actively searching for them? When the time comes, I'll eventually recall."

My slightly damp eyes shot open and I glowered at him. His smile slipped and he pressed his lips together. Lowering his head, he climbed out of the bed, put on his shoes and sat beside me. With the back of my hand, I quickly brushed away my tears of frustration when Ji Kai was not looking.

"Why do you always look like you are about to cry when you see me?" he mumbled in a contrite tone, a line appearing between his brows.

I searched my memory. When had I ever cried in front of Mo Yue? The last time I saw him was a day ago and I was definitely in high spirits.

"What are you talking about? I'm not crying. You've never ever seen me cry."

Ji Kai looked away and drew in a deep breath. He combed a hand through his long, half-tied hair and sighed forlornly while staring at the straight black locks.

"The last time you cried, it was because you were late for a student council meeting and got lectured about it—indirectly. And then you became angry with me even though all I did was perform my job as secretary. That was only last month. Do I need to list out all the instances for you?"

"You… you are Ji Kai?" I swallowed, the flicker of irritation in my heart festered. "So you've already recovered your memories?" My anger coiled in my stomach and I must have made it visible on my face.

"Sorry, I was only trying to joke around," said Ji Kai with his usual solemn expression. Any trace of the earlier convivial atmosphere was suddenly frozen and kept locked away.

Scalding hot tears of relief welled up in my eyes, threatening to overflow with a single blink. I hurriedly dabbed away at my eyes using my sleeves. It was humiliating to think that Ji Kai was always a witness to my moments of vulnerability and stress relief. He was indeed right that the last time that I had teared up in front of him was because I was ten seconds late for the daily morning meeting and the annoying student council president had especially chosen that day to rebuke us on the lack of respect for punctuality. As Ji Kai was the secretary, he had stopped me at the entrance of the club room. I had lashed out at him for having a holier-than-thou attitude and for being a hypocrite who did not treat his friends as friends.

"Please don't cry." His helpless pleading brought me back to reality.

I dried my tears and sniffled. "Are you blind? Which one of your eyes saw me cry?"

Ji Kai opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. He clasped his hands together with his fingers intertwined and sat up straight like a stiff log. A few minutes passed with us just remaining silently still, with the exception of my sniffling.

"Why are you here?" Ji Kai asked, breaking the thick silence.

Recalling what Jin Mu had mentioned about how I would be the least expected person to come to Ji Kai's rescue, I pondered on his question and thought of whether it had any underlying meaning. Was he asking it in a way that suggested his displeasure in seeing me? Or was he genuinely curious about why it was me who was the one who entered this book to save him?

"Are you asking me about the process of me coming here to bring you back to the Garden? Or are you asking about why I would care about your wellbeing?"

Ji Kai wrinkled his nose and tilted his head. "I mean—as part of protocol, it should be someone from the Association who would come to my assistance. But for you to be here—there must have been some complications along the way."

"I volunteered to deliver the holiday assignments to your home and your housekeeper must have mistaken me for the person that you are waiting for. So I boarded a train and ended up in the Willow Garden. After some training, I entered this book twice to find you, first when you were Mo Yue, and now to bring you the memory recovering tea."

"You volunteered?" Ji Kai asked, peering at me through his dark eyes of disbelief. As if uninterested in my entire laborious journey to get here, he repeated again, "You volunteered to bring the assignments to my house?"

I frowned, unable to understand his particular fixation on my kind and charitable act. "What's wrong with that?"

"Don't you hate me or something? I mean, you suddenly stopped being my friend—ever since Shen Qi left."

My breath hitched upon hearing his use of the word 'hate' and I subconsciously shook my head.

"Was our friendship only because of her?" Ji Kai continued without giving me a chance to defend myself.

"That's the exact same question which I want to ask you," I deflected the question back to him. My hand gripped the corner of the wooden table as I straightened myself, ready to engage in the imminent oral debate. "Aren't you only friends with me because Shen Qi is my good friend? After she left, you suddenly became cold and distant towards me. Isn't it because I no longer have any use to you? Before, you were using me to obtain information about her, but when she moved overseas that was the end of your secret crush."

"I have never exploited you, Yuhan. I do genuinely think of you as a friend," he said without missing a beat, looking dumbstruck and heartbroken upon hearing what my perception was of him. In a slightly shaky and unconfident voice, he whispered, "someone whom I can trust and confide in."

The walls around my heavily guarded heart crumbled a little but I was still not convinced. "I also thought of you as my close friend. But it is true that you were acting cold and distant, isn't it? After all, you couldn't even be bothered to finish your explanation—but that was last year's business. I'm not one to hold grudges."

"No." Ji Kai shook his head. "If you are talking about that time when you confronted me about not turning up for my meeting with Shen Qi, I do want to apologise for not being able to explain it properly to you. I don't know what she had told you, but from the outset I had not agreed to meet with her."

"You did not?" I hesitated, barely holding back my righteous anger.

Again, Ji Kai shook his head and pursed his lips. His jaws clenched. "That was what I wanted to explain about. Shen Qi and I had a very complicated and confusing conversation over text and I might have given her the impression that I had agreed to see her off."

In the end, was it all a misunderstanding and I had been too anxious in my pursuit of justice for Shen Qi that I failed to consider things from Ji Kai's perspective? I remained silent, not knowing whether to trust his words.

"It sounds like such a simple task, but you never actually did so."

"I'm not sure if you remember," he stared earnestly at me, his eyes tired and despondent. "The day after you confronted me, I tried to clarify things with you. But you started to avoid me and after some time, I simply thought that you didn't want to be friends anymore. Then a few months ago, you approached me for help with the Literature test and I thought that we were going to be on speaking terms again. Alas, I was wrong."

"And now that I'm doing my best to save you, are you even more confused?"

"A little."

"It's because you didn't show up in school and I became concerned…" I stared down and rubbed my shoes against the ground, channelling all my emotions to a particular spot. There was a lot on my mind that I wanted to verbalise, but I was too exhausted to deal with such a petty matter at the moment. "Well, I'm sorry that I had made a mountain out of a molehill."

"No, it's because I didn't persist enough in clearing things up with you."

I bit my lips and dared to lift my eyes to meet his. "It's true, you need to improve your communication skills."

Ji Kai nodded and did not reply. After a short moment of silence, he spoke up again, a nervous smile appearing on his face. "So, do you want to be friends again?"

"Of course. I'm not one to hold a grudge," I said, taking the opportunity to sound magnanimous and benevolent. "But wait, you haven't addressed one issue yet. Do you like Shen Qi?"

"No," Ji Kai said firmly, his brows knitted as he glowered at me. "How many times do I have to tell you that? You need to get over this obsession of pairing us together."

I laughed at his reaction as my heart lurched at the sense of strange familiarity that surrounded us.

***

Descending down the mountain was less strenuous and warmer with the thick winter coats we were given. More prone to the cold than normal people, I wrapped myself up with three layers of clothing in the belief that it was better to perspire than suffer from hypothermia. Jin Mu said that I was exaggerating and to prevent the situation of me tripping over myself and rolling down the mountain like a rogue dumpling and crushing him, he insisted on walking far behind Ji Kai and I.

"Does that mean Wu-momo, Xiao Lan, Han Dong and friends will never die?" I averted my eyes from the slippery stone steps for a brief moment to stare at Ji Kai in disbelief, interrupting his lengthy explanation regarding the Tower of Ten Thousand Books and the origins of the strange ancient people that I had met.

"Not unless their universe is destroyed or if they return to where they came from," Ji Kai glanced at me and then eyed me apprehensively. "You still have both books and the compass with you, right?"

I lifted my heavy sleeves which were stuffed with the two rolled up books. "They're serving their purpose as my arm guards now."

Ji Kai ignored me and continued. "Every Librarian in my family has to leave their legacy by completing one novel in their lifetime, even if they are not an author by occupation. From each of these special books, one character will be invited to work at the Willow Garden or the Tower of Ten Thousand Books."

"And have you written your legacy yet?"

He shook his head and said dejectedly, "I don't actually want to be the Librarian. Being the Librarian means that I will never be free from this place, this city or country. It means that after high school, I'll only be able to attend a university in Shanghai, otherwise I'll have to travel back and forth every month to attend to the matters at the Tower."

Swallowing back my words, I remained silent. Was that the reason why he had rejected the teachers' advice to apply to the prestigious universities in Beijing or to study overseas?

"Earlier, you said that you are part of an exclusive Library Association which has members all over the country. In that case, why can't you just carry out your duties in another library then, and get another Librarian to take over your family's library in the meantime?"

He shook his head again. "It doesn't work that way. The Library Association is made up of many old families which used to own private libraries. Each family owns their own collection of ancient and antique books—although now most of these books have been donated to the country and education institutions." Giving me a wry smile, he continued, "as my father was the previous Librarian and will be officially handing the position to me when I turn 18, I'll be tied down to this fictional world for the next few decades."

I wrinkled my nose. I could not relate to what Ji Kai was saying and I could barely understand this secret, mysterious, and elusive business of the Library Association. But perhaps changing the subject would make him feel better. "By the way, I've been wondering about this. Does the story change when we are in the books? When I exited Snowy Mountain with a Peach Blossom Tree and returned to the Garden, the words in the book actually changed!"

Ji Kai launched into another lengthy explanation, the air of melancholy that surrounded him lifting gradually, just as I had expected. "The story only changes in the physical copy of the book that we have in the Library. I only bring one original copy of the book into the Library and I always make a few photocopies for the assistant librarians. This is why even the photocopies are reflective of the changes in the original copy. If the original copy is destroyed, even the photocopies will become useless bundles of paper."

"Ah." I nodded along. "And as you mentioned earlier, if the book is destroyed, the world will collapse. In that case, do you bring a new copy of the book into the Library?"

Snorting, Ji Kai crossed his arms over his chest. The expression in his eyes seemed to change suddenly as the air turned even chillier. "We only destroy books that do not deserve to be in the Library. That includes unstable and poorly written books like this one."

My mouth twisted into a grimace and I bit my lip to hide my ugly expression. I shuddered to think about what would happen if Ji Kai ever discovered the secret stories that I have written and even posted on the web. He may print out ten thousand copies of my stories and burn them up over and over. "So you don't replace the destroyed unstable books with new copies?"

"If they are books that are worth keeping and are accidentally destroyed, of course I'd get a replacement copy. But I won't be adding poor quality books into our collection." Ji Kai paused abruptly and glanced at me, then shrugged indifferently. "It all sounds so surreal and inconceivable, doesn't it? If I were you right now, I'd think that this is all part of a dream."

I gave a half-suppressed laugh. "I would have thought it more as an unending nightmare. But at least you're here and now we can go home." After walking for a long time, we were finally reaching the bottom of the mountain. In the distance, the vast lake where the boatman was waiting peeked out from between the wintry trees and shrubbery.

We had only fifty steps left to descend when Ji Kai suddenly stopped. Turning toward me with an apologetic expression, he reached into his sleeves and pulled out a wooden pocket compass. "I won't be going back with you right now. I'll have to take Jin Mu back to his world first." He nudged the compass into my frozen hands. "Take this and return first, alright?"

He watched me carefully and I held his gaze, unblinking. "You're not going back with me?"

Ji Kai turned to look at Jin Mu, who was staring down at us with a puzzled look on his face.

"What's wrong?" Jin Mu mouthed at us, startled at the sudden attention.

"Yuhan will be leaving first," Ji Kai said resolutely. Although he was speaking to Jin Mu, it was clear from his tone that he was directing it like a command to me. "I'll take you back to your clinic, so Jin-dage, please follow me onto another boat later."

"How will you go back if you give your compass to me? Will you end up being stuck in another book again? Are you sure you will be able to come back?" I frantically pulled out both books from my sleeves and attempted to flatten them as I handed the book Floating Lanterns, Autumn Moon to Ji Kai. "I was told that I can only leave the Garden with you accompanying me. When will you return?"

"With my personal compass, you will be able to leave the Garden without me. As for how I'll get back, I'll make do with the compass that you have right now," he said and extended his hand in front of me.

I fished out the compass from my bag and slapped it reluctantly onto Ji Kai's hand. "How does this compass help you to traverse the different book realms?"

"Sorry, but that's a Ji family's secret. You should be thankful that we aren't going to lock you up in our dungeon and erase your memories." Ji Kai smiled warmly as he patted my shoulder before climbing down the remaining flight of stairs.

As I remained unmoving and at a loss for words, Jin Mu came up beside me and whispered, "Don't worry, Fang-guniang. I won't keep him back for too long and I'll return him to you soon."

Walking towards the jetty in silence, I glanced surreptitiously at Ji Kai's side-profile multiple times. If I had my phone right now, I would have taken a photo of him. It was probably the last time I would see this side of Ji Kai—wearing ancient Chinese clothing with the gentle breeze blowing in his long black hair… Unfortunately, no one would believe me if I said that I had seen Ji Kai participating in the hanfu revival movement and that he was an avid supporter of it.

*** ***