A great booming sound soared up and ruptured the sky.
The tremors of this roar rocked the entire valley. Listening to the sound of her heartbeat as it became slower and slower, she dared not even hazard a guess. Would he be able to come out alive? What if those people wanted to force a fight to the death, where everyone, both for and against them, would perish together? ...
Slowly, she leaned her back against the rock face and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself.
Tomorrow, or perhaps after the sun came up, she would be walking out of here, walking to a place beneath the sun, where there were no sounds of gunfire and artillery exploding, and continuing with her peaceful life.
Peacefulness. Safety. These seemed to be merely wishful thinking.
To her, as she sat here on these rocks, they were far and unreachable words.
Until someone really did walk close to her. She heard the sound of gravel and loose rocks slipping and moving. Her eyes flew open, and she saw an unfamiliar man standing in the shadows behind her.
He handed a piece of cloth to her.
In passing, he pressed his index finger against his lips.
In the moonlight, that piece of cloth...
... looked very familiar.<>Please read this at hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com
Wen Han froze for several seconds, her heart palpitating. She recognized it now—it was a piece of cloth from her skirt. Dropping her head down frantically, she pulled up the corner of her skirt to look, searching all over for signs that it had been torn. When had it been torn? When? Was it him? Her head whipped up again.
That young man was assessing her with an amused gaze. What female creature could manage to cause Cheng Muyun to be in such a state? A mere girl like this?
After seeing that Wen Han had recognized her own garment and guessed whom it was from, he beckoned at her. "Come with me."
Wen Han turned and glanced back at those people, then followed that person away from there. Because of this piece of cloth, she did not even so much as consider whether this might be a ploy.<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the translation has been taken without consent of the translator.
The mountain path was rough and uneven.
She could not discern any directions.
Her instinct was that this person was winding their way around the entire mountain, and he had not even thought about turning around to help her. In the beginning, Wen Han had still tried to prevent any accidental flashes of too much skin or other things that should not be flashed, and would smooth and arrange her ripped skirt. Later, however, she gave up. No one was looking at her in this virgin forest anyway, and the man up ahead evidently did not view her as female either.
They walked until she was at the point of despair. At last, they saw the edge of this forest.
There was light—moonlight.<>This is an UNAUTHORIZED copy, taken from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com
It shone upon the underbrush in which there was no path.
After enduring the torment of such a night, the muscles in her legs were long since utterly aching and sore. Through the waist-high grass, she plodded wearily. She watched as the man braced his weight on his one hand that he had placed on a boulder and hopped up onto that huge rock.
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Life: A Black and White Film (一生一世，黑白影画)
General FictionWen Han has arrived in Nepal on vacation and, as a Buddhist believer, also a pilgrimage. But very shortly after entering the borders, she runs in again into someone she had had one encounter with six months ago, hundreds of miles away on the far-off...
