The Obsessive Husband Fished from the River

[Next up: My Lord Bows His Head. Hope you'll add it to your collection!]

When A Luo pulled Xu Heng from the icy river, she thought she had merely picked up a troublesome burden.

The man was injured and ill. He ate all her provisions and used up her medicinal herbs, forcing her to work even harder as she trekked over the mountains.

Later, even with a limp, he followed close behind, his eyes fixed firmly on her as they crossed forests and streams.

Late one quiet night, he asked in a soft voice, "After I've had my revenge... can I come back to find you?"

Listening to the mountain wind howl outside, A Luo remembered the warm breath beside her when she woke.

"Do as you like," she said.

The pursuers came without warning. He told her to leave first and said he would follow soon.

But she waited three days at Eagle Beak Cliff, then spent a month searching across a hundred miles of mountains and rivers. In the end, all she found by the river was dried blood and a bloodstained scrap of cloth.

She began tossing dead branches into her basket, one, then two... until it was full to overflowing, the branches piled up like a small hill.

The mountain flowers bloomed and withered. She thought that perhaps the man was like the mist in the mountain ravine: once it dispersed, it would never return.

But he came back all the same.

He came with the stench of blood clinging to him, and eyes even more stubborn than before.

No matter how she drove him off, he stayed by her side as if rooted to the spot.

He said he had nowhere else to go, and begged her to like him, to love him.

Then, one stormy morning, he came upon the bags she had packed.

She was going to disappear into the vast mountains that had raised her.

Xu Heng, always stubborn yet gentle, finally went mad.

Ignoring the treacherous mountain paths and his injuries, he dragged her down the mountain by force through the storm.

On the muddy trail, he fell to his knees. One arm tightened around her waist, while the other reached up across her chest to grip her shoulder, pulling her more tightly into his embrace, as if only that could fill the black hole torn open in his heart.

"I knew... I knew it..." His sobs carried a certainty close to despair. "You must not want to wait for me... You must be... leaving me behind again..."

#I counted every farewell with dead branches, and you paved your way home with blood#

Theme: Love means never forgetting