“Lu Shiyan, we're not close.” At a traditional Hanfu event, the faint scar beneath Song Muran's swaying skirt as she turned away pierced his heart.
She had once braved the rain to bring him a good-luck charm and waited for him to show concern when she had a fever. All she got in return was his hot-and-cold treatment. Only after she gathered up all her courage and said, “When you love someone, you have to know when to stop,” did he finally come to his senses.
He clumsily tries to win her back: he gets a list of her likes from her best friend, studies books on Hanfu, learns to make low-sugar desserts, and pretends to run into her at the Hanfu shop she often visits. When he quietly helps move props, his ears turn red. Under her brothers' “grilling,” he stands tall and says, “I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to her.”
When fans mob her at an event out of town, he drives across provincial borders and shields her. His words, “Don't be afraid. I'm here,” crack the ice around her heart. He takes out the good-luck charm he has kept close for years and says, eyes red, “I was an idiot before. Please don't leave me again.”
From his colleagues at the police station being astonished that “the chief can smile” to people teasing him as a “wife-protecting fanatic” when he accompanies her in Hanfu; from gently standing by her at the meeting with her family to kissing the scar on her ankle beneath the crabapple tree and promising, “From now on, I'll be your little foot warmer.”
At last, at their wedding in phoenix crown and red wedding robes, he looks at her and says, “I didn't understand love before. For the rest of my life, it's only you.”
After they marry, he remembers every one of her likes and warms the bed with her feet tucked against him in winter. In her Hanfu videos, he's always there in the background, clumsily handing her fabric.
“What are you embroidering?”
“A good-luck charm for our baby.”
Sunlight streams through the window lattice and falls on the two charms side by side. Their silver bells chime softly, as if to say: the lost time has been made up for, and the years ahead will be peaceful and long.
