You’re the Only One I Love

[She mends the cracks left by a thousand years,

while he guards the one exception he has ever made.

In the quietest depths of ancient artifacts,

she hears the loudest stirrings of the heart.]

Shi Yang, a rising star in the field of mural restoration and Professor Chen’s prized protégé, was leaving home to head north when every professor in her family took turns offering warnings, as if she were going not to a historic cultural capital but to some untamed wilderness.

Her mother hurriedly contacted Mrs. Shen, an old friend in Beicheng, and asked her to look after Shi Yang. The Shen family welcomed her with open arms, and their two young masters were promptly brought before her. The dinner party had unmistakably turned into a matchmaking session.

But no one noticed the Shen family’s most low-key and refined uncle, Shen Yuheng, seated at the head of the table. Through all the noise, for the first time, beyond restoration films and ancient books, he felt an almost unprecedented urge to investigate someone.

He personally saw her in the Shen family study, infer the grandeur of the entire Tang dynasty mural from a mere half-patch of faded pigment. He also watched her gently turn down invitations from both nephews, giving the simplest of reasons: “I have to go to the restoration institute tomorrow. I can’t afford distractions.”

Later, the two young masters returned empty-handed. Mrs. Shen sighed, “Such a lovely girl. How can she be so oblivious?”

Shen Yuheng set down his teacup, his voice clear and cool. “She isn’t oblivious.”

It was just that what she saw and cared about had never been the things they wanted to offer her.

Later still, the institute urgently needed a lead researcher for its most challenging Western Regions project. The person in charge nervously presented the proposal to the chief consultant. Shen Yuheng, hailed as “the last master of the field” and long uninvolved in practical affairs, tapped the name “Shi Yang” on the list with a fingertip.

“I’ll personally oversee this project.”

Only then did everyone realize that he had made exception after exception for her, clearing away the fog in her path. Perhaps the melting of an iceberg was no myth after all.