Wen Shiyin spoke first. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to eavesdrop. But I returned a bit earlier than planned, and it didn't seem like a good idea at the time to step into your conversation."
Well, there went my plan of keeping the details of the truth from her. I smiled a little awkwardly. "It's alright," I said. "I wouldn't have intentionally hid it from you … If not because the masters didn't want the news to spread."
"I won't tell anyone else," she said promptly, "I swear." Then she hesitated a little before adding, "Is it all true? Have you really been expelled from Mount Hua?"
It surprised me a little that this was the first piece of the conversation she thought of confirming. "It is true," I replied. "The excuse I've been telling everyone else is that my master and I have been assigned an errand that might take a very long time to complete. We are leaving at sundown today."