Inner Thoughts of the Fourth Miss

Yunhe and her talked for a couple more minutes, and then, Yujia remembered part of the reason of why she went to Lingxin in the first place. 

"Senior Brother, I heard from someone that Lingxin had a painting convention coming up soon. When is that?" 

Yunhe was sketching a line with a pencil that Yujia taught him how to use a few moments ago when he heard the question and replied, "It's tomorrow morning. Do you want to go?" He looked up from the pencil that he clumsily held in his hand. 

"Morning?" Yujia thought back to her agreement to meet up with Yushang in the morning too, which was at the hour of Chen1. "When exactly in the morning?" 

"Chen." 

Hearing this response, Yujia bit her bottom lip. The two times conflicted with each other. 

"That's too bad then," she sighed, "I don't think I can go. I have a meeting at the same time." 

Yunhe stopped sketching his line. "The convention is all the way until almost the hour of Wu2. You could arrive a little later, if you really wanted to go." 

"What do you even do at one of those conventions? Who goes there?" Yujia raised her eyebrows. 

"There's a lot of young masters and students and Lingxin who attend— maybe around almost one-hundred or so people? Though, the convention is split into two sections, so all normal students gather in a general area while more special individuals get to discuss in the Ice Lily Pavilion. We exchange opinions about painting, calligraphy, poetry, and the like. Usually, we start painting and showing each other recent works too." 

"Special individuals? Are you one of them?"

Yunhe nodded. "They're basically the students who are disciples and their guests. Usually, there are only ten or so, making the discussion a lot more personal. You're one of them." He smiled. 

"And so are you." Yujia looked down at the piece of paper they were both testing pencils on. 

She showed Yunhe how to use pencils after they finished talking about the situation with Bo Zhizhong. He seemed pretty interested in learning how to use it too, and so the two of them sketched for a while on a piece of paper. 

The painting convention would definitely be a good place to advertise her pencils. After seeing Yunhe's enthusiastic reaction to her pencils, Yujia was sure that the others at the convention would be interested too. Anyone who had a passion for art would take interest. If she wanted to build her first loyal buyers for her shop, the convention seemed like the best place to start. 

She couldn't reschedule her meeting with Zhizhong, nor was it a good choice to miss the convention. Maybe she would just talk through her meeting with Zhizhong quickly and try to run to the convention before she was too late. That seemed like her only option right now. 

"I'll try to go," Yujia said after thinking things through. 

"Maybe you could let others try your pencils too," Yunhe suggested with a smile. 

She smiled back. "I was just thinking that."

Their conversation went back to the topic of how to use pencils, and Yujia slowly taught Yunhe how to shade the proper way with them. By the end of their conversation, he managed to draw and shade the branches of a crooked tree, which he appeared both proud and fascinated by. 

Seeing that more than an hour had passed and her master still wasn't up, Yujia decided to leave. She would make sure to visit later in the afternoon another day. 

After bidding farewell with her senior brother, Yujia began her walk back home, her previous questions surfacing back to her. 

They still conflicted her, tracing after every single thought she had. She knew she had to change herself. That was a definite answer. Yet everything else was indefinite, a pure mess of blurry answers that meant both everything and nothing. 

When she arrived at her courtyard, she still didn't know the answer, and she wasn't sure how long it would take for her to arrive at an answer. 

Seeing Hui'er and the unfinished sketches she left on the table, Yujia decided that it wasn't necessarily to come to a conclusion right away. It likely wasn't a conclusion she could come to right away either. A true answer to her question would come slowly and naturally to her one day.

For now, she had other things to work on.