Chapter 106 Bean Sprout, you really don't remember Little Baldy? ...
Qi Jingxuan suddenly sat up in bed, looking at the person in front of him in disbelief: "Aci, you...you didn't leave?"
Shen Yan tilted her head: "Are you in such a hurry for me to leave?"
"No, no."
Qi Jingxuan waved his hands repeatedly and got up to go to her side, but his shoes were not on properly, and he almost tripped over his own feet.
Shen Yan quickly helped him up, and he stood up awkwardly, stammering, "I...I thought you had already left."
"I didn't bring anything with me. It's one thing to leave the palace with all that gold and silver jewelry, but my books are very precious. How could I bear to leave them behind like this?"
Shen Yan smiled.
Qi Jingxuan suddenly realized, but the faint hope that had been rising in his heart was dashed again: "You came back... to pack your things?"
The tears he had just stopped were about to fall again, but he forced them back, wiped his face, and said, "Let me help you."
He glanced around the room, then walked to the display shelf and began to unload things.
"Have your dowry prepared according to the list. Don't just take what your father-in-law, Lord Shen, and the others prepared for you. The things the palace gave you were originally meant for you; they are what you deserve. Take them all with you."
"Take these with you too. I'm leaving Beijing next year anyway, and the journey is too long to take many things with me. You should take them. Otherwise, they're just a waste to leave them here. Who knows, someone might lie and say they're lost or broken one day, and someone else will benefit from them."
He moved quickly, grabbing several items and placing them on the table in the blink of an eye. It seemed that as long as he was busy, he could stop thinking about anything else and stop feeling sad about Shen Yan's departure.
Just as he turned to move a jade bonsai, he saw Shen Yan blocking his way.
She held a piece of paper in her hand, a piece of paper that had been crumpled and then flattened, with many creases still visible on it. It was the divorce agreement that Qi Jingxuan had given her yesterday.
"This is really for me."
Shen Yan asked.
Qi Jingxuan looked at the crumpled piece of paper, and his heart felt as if it had been clenched and crumpled.
His eyes stung with tears, and he nodded with difficulty, "Yes."
No regrets
Qi Jingxuan looked away, his throat tightening, and said, "Mm."
Tears welled up again, and as he reached up to wipe them away, a handkerchief was handed to him.
Qi Jingxuan casually took the handkerchief and wiped his face a few times. Just as he was about to return it to Shen Yan, he heard her say, "Does this handkerchief look familiar to Your Highness?"
handkerchief
Qi Jingxuan was taken aback. He looked closely at the square handkerchief and realized that it was not the one Shen Yan usually used.
He frowned: "Where did this come from? I've never seen it before."
If you haven't seen it before, you can't say it looks familiar.
"Haven't you seen this before?" Shen Yan looked somewhat surprised. "This is something stored in the Prince's mansion's warehouse. It's been there for many years. I asked the servants, and they said it was brought out from the palace and is one of your old belongings."
"My old things"
Qi Jingxuan frowned even more, holding the handkerchief in his hand and looking at it over and over for a long time, but he had no recollection of it at all.
“Impossible,” he said decisively. “This material is so rough that only ordinary palace maids and eunuchs would use it in the palace. I would never use this kind of fabric for my things.”
"If it's before I was brought into the palace... that would be when I was two or three years old. But all my childhood belongings are kept with my mother, and I never took them out of the palace."
"And what is this embroidery... what is it?"
Qi Jingxuan pointed to the clump of something in the corner of the handkerchief, looking rather disgusted: "I can't even tell if it's a flower or grass."
“Although my mother hasn’t sewed in a long time, her embroidery skills are still quite good. I’ve seen the clothes I wore when I was little, and although the embroidery on them wasn’t as skillful as that of the embroiderers outside, it was still very beautiful. This couldn’t have been embroidered by my mother, so it couldn’t have been something I used before I entered the palace.”
As he spoke, he tugged at the loose thread on the "embroidery": "The stitches weren't even finished properly; they just tied a knot on the outside. With such a big lump sticking out, it must be so uncomfortable to wipe my face. My mother would never let me use something like this."
He spoke with certainty, partly because he genuinely didn't recognize the object, and partly because he feared that Shen Yan might be misled by gossip and misunderstand him.
Although the handkerchief is crudely made, it's clearly a woman's item. I wonder who told Aci it was his old possession. What if Aci misunderstands and thinks he had something going on with some palace maid? What if she further believes he gave her the divorce papers because he has someone else in his heart?
Although Qi Jingxuan was prepared to divorce Shen Yan, he did not want to leave such an impression on her in the end.
Shen Yan looked at the tangled thread he was pointing at and pursed her lips: "Your Highness even knows how to stop the needlework."
Qi Jingxuan inexplicably felt that there was something wrong with her tone, and he became increasingly convinced that there was something wrong with the handkerchief. He was eager to distance himself from her.
"Aci, I really don't recognize this handkerchief. Did someone spread rumors about you? Tell me who it was, I'll go find them! Why are you throwing mud at someone like this for no reason?"
As he spoke, he recalled the handkerchief between Prince Ning and Lady Liu, and suddenly realized: "Someone must have learned the details of Prince Ning's case and wants to use the same method to frame me!"
"Aci, you can't believe them! You're the only one in my heart, I've never liked anyone else!"
Qi Jingxuan grew angrier as he spoke, throwing the handkerchief forcefully to the ground and raising his foot to stomp on it.
Shen Yan never expected him to do this, and exclaimed in surprise, "Don't step on it, this is mine...!"
Her words were no match for Qi Jingxuan's feet. Before she could finish speaking, Qi Jingxuan's large foot landed on her.
Qi Jingxuan's kick was very forceful, and even when he heard the word "I" and wanted to pull back, it was too late.
His heart skipped a beat. He looked at the handkerchief he had stepped on, then at Shen Yan's face. He stiffly and slowly moved his foot away, revealing a huge, clear footprint on the handkerchief.
…………
"This...this handkerchief...is yours."
Qi Jingxuan sat on the edge of the daybed, looking at the handkerchief placed on the kang table, his hands nervously resting on his knees.
Although he had picked up the handkerchief and dusted it off several times, the footprints on it were still clearly visible.
Shen Yan didn't reply to him, only saying, "This handkerchief is crudely made, and the embroidery is very poor."
"No, no, no, no, no," Qi Jingxuan shook his head repeatedly, swallowed, glanced at the handkerchief again, and tried to find the right words, "It's very... very simple, extremely... extremely..."
He hesitated for a long time, unable to come up with a response, and was just starting to worry when he saw Shen Yan point to a lump in the corner and ask, "Then tell me what this embroidery is?"
This stumped Qi Jingxuan. He looked at it from left to right but couldn't figure out what it was. Just as he was hesitating to guess, he heard Shen Yan chuckle: "It's an orchid."
“Yes, orchids!” Qi Jingxuan immediately chimed in, “This is clearly an orchid! The embroidery is very… evocative.”
As he spoke, he pointed to the loose thread that he had just criticized: "This loose thread is left just right, like a flower stamen."
Shen Yan suppressed a laugh: "I was just kidding, it was actually bamboo."
Qi Jingxuan's face stiffened as he looked at this thing that had absolutely nothing to do with bamboo. He racked his brains for a long time but couldn't come up with a suitable explanation.
Shen Yan looked at his flushed face and laughed loudly: "Silly boy, it's just an orchid, I was just teasing you."
Qi Jingxuan breathed a sigh of relief. Seeing her smiling happily, he knew he wasn't angry that he had dirtied the handkerchief. He couldn't help but ask, "Aci, didn't you just say this was found in the Prince's warehouse and was one of my old things? How come... it's yours now?"
Shen Yan leaned back slightly, supporting herself with her hands on either side, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed swaying gently: "You really don't remember Little Baldy?"
Little Baldy
Bald
Qi Jingxuan suddenly raised his hand to cover his head: "How did you know?"
Then she quickly explained, "I'm not bald! This is... this is because I was injured when I was little and my hair stopped growing. I wasn't born bald. And it's just a little bit, not even as big as a fingernail. It doesn't count as baldness. You..."
As he spoke, he recalled the first half of Shen Yan's words: "You really don't remember?"
What should he remember?
Aci seemed to know something about the scar on his head, and today she inexplicably took out this handkerchief. Is there any connection between these two things?
Qi Jingxuan felt that he must have overlooked something very important, something extremely important.
Scars, handkerchiefs. Scars, handkerchiefs...
Something flashed through Qi Jingxuan's mind, and he suddenly became excited, pointing at the handkerchief, his voice trembling: "Is it...is it that handkerchief? The one I used to wrap around my head to stop the bleeding when I was injured?"
"This...this...this is your Aci. You are...the little girl who saved me."
At that time, Qi Jingxuan was five years old. He was kidnapped while playing outside the palace, but was rescued by an old man and a little girl.
He was injured on his head when he was rescued, and the little girl used a handkerchief to wrap the wound to stop the bleeding.
Later... later he fell into a coma, and when he woke up he was back in the palace. The old man and the little girl had disappeared, and they could not be found in the entire capital.
Wanting to repay the kindness, he ordered someone to carefully put the handkerchief away. But as time went by, there was still no trace of his benefactor, and the matter was gradually forgotten. The handkerchief was also put away and not seen for a long time.
Shen Yan smiled at Qi Jingxuan, swinging her legs more vigorously, and said in a light tone, "I remember now."
This undoubtedly confirmed Qi Jingxuan's statement, and he excitedly stood up from the daybed: "It's you, it really is you! We have a history back then!"
Shen Yan nodded: "Didn't I tell you that I came to the capital once when I was a child? My grandfather accompanied me there."
"When I first arrived in the capital, I was so captivated by the bustling city that I lost sight of my grandfather and was abducted. The abductor claimed to be my father, but no matter how much I cried and denied it, no one on the street believed me."
“Only a young master led a group of people to stop us. He asked what was going on with the kidnapper and said he would take him to see the officials so that the yamen could determine whether I was his daughter or not.”
"The kidnapper thought the young master was meddling in other people's business and tried to beat him up, but he was beaten up by the young master's men instead, and was eventually taken to the government office. When he got to the government office, he still insisted that he was my father. Fortunately, my grandfather came and I was able to get away."
"Later, the young master ran into trouble. My grandfather and I happened to see it and felt we couldn't ignore it, so we risked pretending there was a fire nearby to attract many people and rescued him in the chaos."
The two people's statements matched up perfectly, proving that it was indeed Shen Yan who saved Qi Jingxuan, and it was indeed Qi Jingxuan who saved Shen Yan.
Qi Jingxuan's face lit up with joy, and he grabbed Shen Yan's hand: "Yes, yes, it really is you, Aci! That old man is your grandfather...we...we've known each other for so long!"
As he spoke, he looked Shen Yan up and down several times, and laughed, "You've changed so much. Although I don't remember what you looked like when you were little, I remember that you had a big head and a small body, like a bean sprout. Now you've grown so tall and so beautiful."
His tone was wistful, his face beaming with joy. Shen Yan, however, tilted her head, her eyes narrowing slightly: "Bean Sprout."
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Author's Note: The next chapter should really mark the end of the story, finally...
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