The Golden Hairpin

"That suicide note—the one you thought was my confession—the second letter, was it?"

Huang Zixiao's voice was hoarse as she asked slowly.

Yu Xuan closed his eyes and nodded firmly. "Yes. I thought I was surely going to die, but Qi Teng saved me. He tried to persuade me that since I had already eliminated Prefect Huang, I should serve under Governor Fan, promising me boundless prospects. I refused him, wanting only to leave it all behind. Then, I fell into a daze, and when I woke again, I had forgotten all the evil I had done. Perhaps my subconscious sought to protect me, so I kept convincing myself that it was all your doing—that the evidence was irrefutable. I grew more and more stubborn in believing you had killed your parents, even convincing myself that I had seen you holding arsenic with my own eyes. For example..."

He gritted his teeth, speaking with excruciating difficulty. "I returned home and saw the suicide note left on my desk. The words inside made me think... it was about you."

Years of upbringing, overturned in a single night. A family destroyed, hands stained with blood. Love misplaced, fate entangled in sin.

It was him. And it was her.

The same life, the same destiny, cycling endlessly like the two small fish on the jade bracelet, each biting the other's tail, entwined in an unbreakable loop.

"I forgot everything I had done, unable to tell whether it was you writing to me or me writing to you. I never imagined... we both learned Lady Wei's calligraphy. I used to secretly copy books for you, mimicking your handwriting until even the same mistakes were identical..."

His voice was rough and choked, utterly unlike his usual clear and gentle tone. Slowly, he stood up, his eyes, veiled with a thin mist of tears, fixed on her.

His face was as pale as ice, his white skin marked only by the black of his pupils and the faint blue of his lips. Like a figure painted on a white wall, perfect in outline but devoid of color, lifeless.

His gaze held hers deeply, just as it had years ago when they first met—when he knelt before her to pick up a fallen lotus bud and looked up, dazed.

The dragonflies that had brushed past their ears were long dead. All the lotuses had withered. Only these eyes, and all they contained, remained unchanged.

Time had been so kind—turning a destitute beggar into a man who could captivate the world, turning an innocent girl into a brilliant young woman.

Yet fate was so cruel—making these two souls the architects of each other's ruin, each the other's greatest enemy.

"Ah-Xia..." he whispered, reaching out to her.

Beside them, Li Shubai and Wang Yun, though aware of Huang Zixiao's true identity, were taken aback when he suddenly called Yang Chonggu "Ah-Xia." The others, like Zhou Ziqin, were utterly bewildered.

But Huang Zixiao stood motionless before him, not lifting a hand to meet his.

His deathly pale face actually softened into a faint smile as he murmured, "Yes... I can never... touch you again."

Yu Xuan died at dawn that day.

As a high-profile prisoner, the guards escorted him home first to gather his belongings before taking him to prison.He had remembered everything, including where he had hidden the poison. Without a word, he retrieved and swallowed it, then silently followed the jailers to his cell as if nothing had happened.

Sitting in the dark prison, he awaited the same fate as Huang Zixiao's parents, quietly feeling the incurable venom consume his body.

Countless blades seemed to twist in his stomach, his organs writhing in unbearable agony. The pain was so intense he couldn’t move a finger or utter a sound.

Yet it lasted only a moment before all consciousness faded. Death came to him like the warm spring waters of that year, or the soft snowflakes of winters past. Amid the crimson haze before his eyes, he curled up in the cell, lifting his head dazedly to see an illusion—the first wild, proud flower he had ever beheld in his life.

The moonlight streamed through the narrow iron bars, casting its glow on his pale, faintly smiling face, just as it filtered through the carved five-bat window lattice onto Huang Zixiao.

Half a year of relentless exhaustion had finally lifted, and the tension that had gripped her day and night had eased. She slept beneath the window, peaceful and serene, her breath soft.

She dreamed.

In her dream, she saw her parents, her elder brother, her uncle, and her grandmother. They sat beneath an osmanthus tree, drinking osmanthus wine, smiling and beckoning to her.

Lifting the hem of her skirt, she ran toward them over the lush, velvety grass, green as silk threads.

The sunlight was dazzling, golden and bright. Petals of osmanthus fell upon her family—on their shoulders, their heads—and scattered across the table like a fragrant blanket. The thick, honeyed sweetness enveloped them like a slowly swirling vortex. Gazing at their smiles, she felt dizzy yet happier than ever before.

She wondered in slight surprise—how could she be drunk already, without even tasting the wine?

But it didn’t matter. The sunlight was so warm, the fragrance so sweet, the breeze so gentle. Resting her chin in her hand, she watched them all. They spoke of trivial things, their words indistinct, but as long as everyone was happy, that was enough.

Huang Zixiao was still that sixteen-year-old girl—dressed in light silk robes with narrow sleeves, born into nobility, beautiful and renowned, her life seemingly perfect.

Laughing with them under the bright sun and floral scent, she suddenly felt a pang of loneliness, an emptiness in her heart.

For some reason, she slowly stood and turned, walking away in silence. She left behind the osmanthus-scented haven, stepped out of that warm, comforting sky.

The summer wind rustled through lotus leaves, and there, across from her, stood Yu Xuan. Against the billowing wind and the swaying lotus leaves, his figure was bathed in shimmering light.

Soft silver radiance, pure and luminous. He was like a fresh bamboo shoot in spring, its outer sheath just peeled away, revealing tender green beneath a faint dusting of white powder—slender, graceful, untouched by worldly grime.

Smiling, he reached out to her and called softly, "Ah Xia."

The gentle breeze lifted the hem of his robe and stirred the hair at her temples.

This was her frozen dream—a corner untouched by wind or rain, where the future seemed never to arrive.

The corners of her lips curved slightly into a faint smile.

She reached out and took his hand.

Fingers intertwined, hearts entwined.

She lowered her gaze and looked at his hand.The slender hand, with its well-proportioned joints, held hers with a familiar, perfect balance of strength—gentle yet firm, accommodating without force.

She smiled, looking up at him, at the man who had illuminated the most beautiful years of her youth, and shook her head with a laugh.

She released his hand, slowly, and clenched her now-empty right hand into a fist.

"Goodbye," she said.

Before the lotus pond, in the sweeping wind, she gazed up at Yu Xuan's face, her eyes glistening with tears as she smiled. "No, never again, not in this life or the next."

When she awoke, it was already afternoon. The slanting sunlight streamed through the window, the lingering heat of late summer still in the air, though the golden breeze had begun to whisper through.

The world outside was clear and radiant, bathed in light. She was still in the little pavilion where she had once lived, within the gardens of the Governor's residence.

Rising, she walked to the window and pushed it open to look outside.

The lotus pond remained unchanged, the ivy lush and green. An early-blooming osmanthus tree had already begun to release its fragrance—not as rich as in her dream, but carried faintly on the breeze, sweet and delicate.

She tried to recall what she had been doing on this day the year before, but found she could no longer remember.

The pavilion had been sealed for half a year, everything left untouched, exactly as it had been. She washed her face with the remaining water from yesterday's pitcher, then opened the wardrobe and chose a plain silk dress and simple silk slippers, devoid of any ornament. Having grown accustomed to binding her chest, she now felt oddly unmoored without it.

Next, she opened her dressing table and propped up the tarnished bronze mirror, arranging her hair into the simplest of buns. Without Mi Wu and the others around, she wasn’t very skilled at grooming herself. In the past, she had always worn men’s clothing when going out, sparing herself the trouble.

Her fingers trailed over the hairpins in the jewelry box, lingering for a long moment on the silver hairpin Li Shubai had given her. In the end, she selected a pair of plain white jade pins and fastened them into her hair, then added a pair of small pearl earrings from the South Sea.

Stepping out of the pavilion, she stood on the front platform as she had always done, gazing at the small garden before her.

The back garden of the Governor’s residence—the place where she had lived for so many years—was familiar to her in every stone, every flower and blade of grass. Only now, there was no one left to walk through it with her.

She moved along the covered walkway, stepping forward into the early autumn wind. Her light garments fluttered like rippling waves, like willow branches swaying low.

As she rounded the corridor, she saw Li Shubai sitting alone before a chessboard in the small pavilion atop the rockery. Zhang Xingying stood in attendance beside him, while Zhou Ziqin slumped over the railing with a look of utter frustration, clearly having abandoned all hope of competing against Li Shubai in a game of chess.

Zhou Ziqin’s gaze landed on her and refused to budge.

His mouth fell open, his eyes widening in shock as he stared dumbfounded at her approach. Even as she ascended the rockery and curtsied gracefully before the pavilion, his jaw remained slack.

Li Shubai’s eyes rested on her, his expression calm and unreadable, save for the faintest hint of a smile at the corners of his lips—like the sudden sight of a first bloom after turning a bend in a desolate wilderness.

Zhou Ziqin clutched his chin as if to keep it from dropping further, stammering, "Chong... Chonggu?"

Huang Zixiang tilted her head slightly and nodded at him with a smile."You... you... you... a perfectly good eunuch, why on earth are you dressed as a woman?" Zhou Ziqin pressed his right fist against his chest, his face flushed with shock and rapid heartbeat, "D-don't come so close! You... you... you look too good as a woman, I... I can hardly stand it..."

She could only ask him, "Last night, when Yu Xuan called me 'Ah Xia,' didn't you hear it?"

"I... I... I thought he was hallucinating again, reaching out to the Huang Zixiang of his dreams," Zhou Ziqin blurted out, completely oblivious to the sensitivity of the topic, "Besides, you didn't respond... didn't reach back, right?"

Huang Zixiang gave up on trying to communicate with him, lifted the hem of her skirt, and walked into the pavilion, stopping by the chessboard.

Li Shubai held a chess piece in his hand, looked up at her for a long moment, then abandoned the game. He reached for the chess box, collecting the pieces one by one, and gestured for her to sit. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes... very well," she replied softly, sitting across from him.

Zhou Ziqin cautiously inched closer, his face still full of shock, scrutinizing her from every angle as if he might poke her with a finger to check if she was real.

Huang Zixiang sighed helplessly, "Stop staring. Yang Chonggu is Huang Zixiang."

Hearing this, Zhou Ziqin glanced at the indifferent Li Shubai, then at the oddly behaving Zhang Xingying, and finally pouted in frustration, exclaiming, "This is just like you all, always keeping me out of the loop! Everyone else knows the truth, even Zhang Xingying knows, and I'm the only one left in the dark! Can we still be good friends?"

"I'm sorry, Ziqin," Huang Zixiang sighed. "Because of the nationwide manhunt, His Highness helped me conceal my identity and pose as a eunuch. I was worried that revealing the truth might cause trouble for you, so I didn’t mean to keep it from you on purpose."

"You're really... really..." he muttered, then suddenly jumped up, his frustration vanishing as excitement took over, "This is just too great!"

The other three in the pavilion stared at him speechlessly as he bounced around joyfully, "This is fantastic! The biggest worry of my life is finally resolved!"

Zhang Xingying couldn’t help but ask, "What was the biggest worry of your life?"

"It's this—I've always wondered, in the great Tang Empire, who is better at solving cases and reasoning, Huang Zixiang or Yang Chonggu? If they ever met, who would come out on top?" Zhou Ziqin's eyes sparkled as he looked at Huang Zixiang, relief washing over him, "This question has been haunting me! Lately, I've been so torn I could go mad—no appetite, sleepless nights! Now that I know you're the same person, I feel like I could eat three big bowls of rice and sleep till noon again!"