The Artist Finally Reunites

"Though I was set on dying, I did not die. He saved me, kept me alive on my last breath, for reasons I cannot fathom. Perhaps it would've been easier to convince an old tool than to sharpen a new one, especially after all these years. Yet my heart was set. At the first chance I had, I left," Yufeng concluded her story.

Yujia realized she had been holding her breath in anticipation towards the ending of the story. She slowly exhaled, wiping her palms against her skirt. 

Yet again, it was another past to leave her wordless.

After hearing all of it, she found no surprise in how Yufeng tried to keep her secrecy. If she, too, had experienced that, she wouldn't want to dig up the past. To tell the story again was akin to peeling back the flesh of a half-healed scar, digging at an unhealed wound, leaving it to bleed and bleed and bleed again.