That night, Qin Lian went to bed while Xu Yinchen lay out his bedding on the floor, as usual.
The room was dark. Moonlight came in through the open window, and a light breeze moved through the curtains.
Qin Lian stared at the ceiling. She found herself thinking about the floor. It was hard, and no matter how he arranged the bedding, it couldn't be comfortable. She was still quietly thinking about this when his voice broke the silence.
"Are you sleeping?"
She startled. "Oh...not yet." A pause. "What about you?"
"I can't sleep."
She waited, wondering if it was because the floor was uncomfortable. Should she ask him to sleep on the bed? But… wouldn't that be too fast?
She was still turning this over in her head when his voice broke through her thoughts.
"I was thinking about what happened this afternoon."
She fell silent. Even she could feel her heart beating faster when she thought back to what had happened earlier that day.
A few minutes passed. Just when she thought that was all he wanted to say, he spoke again.
"Since you came here… we've never actually talked about us." A pause. "We don't know anything about each other."
Qin Lian went quiet. Now that he said it, it was true. They had spoken about the children, the house, the kitchen, everything except themselves. She had come to fulfill their engagement, yet they didn't even know each other.
She was silent.
He put his hands under his head and stared out the window at the moonlight as he began, "I joined the military when I was thirteen."
Qin Lian was caught off guard by his sudden openness. Still, she listened carefully, turning slightly toward the window as well, watching the moon outside while his voice mixed with the sound of cicadas drifting in from beyond.
"Life in the village was hard back then. My family needed money to survive, and the military was the only way I could think of to send some back. From such a young age, I learned to struggle, to fight for survival." He paused. "I completed my high school at the military school itself."
"You must know by now, these children aren't mine. They're my sister's. She and her husband, a man I never got to meet, passed away about a year ago and left the three of them behind."
His voice dropped as he spoke, the memories weighing heavily on him, a flicker of sorrow passing through his eyes.
"My sister fell in love with a city man. She got pregnant before marriage." He paused. "People scorned her for it. Even my parents were humiliated. The man's family was from the city; they had wanted their son to marry an educated city girl."
"A village girl who got pregnant before marriage was the last thing they would accept. They refused them outright." His voice was quiet.
"In the end, he and my sister ran away together, leaving our parents behind to face the shame alone. My family was boycotted, shamed at every corner, and…" A pause. "Soon after, my parents fell sick. They couldn't bear the humiliation. They passed away."
He had never spoken about any of this to anyone. Not once, in all these years.
"When all of this was happening, I was away serving in the military. By the time I returned, my parents were already gone. My sister had disappeared with that man; where, I had no idea. For years, there was no news of her. Nothing."
"Then a year ago, out of nowhere, I received word that my sister and her husband had died in an accident." His voice tightened. "It was the first news I had heard of her in years, and yet…"
He went silent.
Qin Lian, who had been listening without a word, felt her chest grow heavy. She had known fragments of his story from the novel, but it was never this detailed.
Now hearing it from him directly, how lonely and helpless he must have felt, returning from years of serving in the military only to find everything in his family was already over. No parents. No sister. Nothing to come back to.
She said nothing. There were no words for something like that. Her nose tingled. She bit her lip, holding herself still.
Xu Yinchen took a slow breath and continued, his voice low. "When I went to my sister's funeral, her husband's family showed up. Not to take in the children, not to comfort them, but to claim the only house their son had left behind."
A short, hollow scoff. "They had no interest in the children. They were ready to throw them into an orphanage without a second thought."
He took a breath.
"So I took them. I brought them back to Qinghe Village, where my parents used to live before they passed. I had to leave my position in the military; I didn't want the children to be moving around with me, suffering in strange places. I had no other choice but to return to the village."
"If I hadn't taken them, they would have had nowhere to go. Just like me." A pause. "There is no one left in my family. My parents are gone. My sister is gone. I am basically alone in this world now."
Qin Lian's throat tightened.
She knew this feeling too well. That same loneliness had lived in her own chest for years, since her parents died and she had no one to rely on. She listened to him speak about it so plainly, without asking for anything, and felt something clench inside her.
She gripped the blanket.
"You're not alone anymore," she said quietly. "You have three children and… a wife now."
Silence.
He swallowed. Something stirred in his chest. After a moment, he smiled and nodded. "You're right. I'm not alone anymore. I have a family to take care of."