It's a long story. Kids, maybe you don't want to hear it. In this era of panic and rush, long stories have become more and more unpopular. But I still want to tell this story. I promise it's wonderful. If you are willing to listen to it consistently, you should not be disappointed. I know that time is precious and I can't go back. I will not consume your youth with worthless things.

I'm 82 years old this year, which is already very old. This story has always been hidden in my heart, and it is also very old. Most of the people mentioned in the story, except for me, are no longer in this world. Many of you have never met them. To you, they, including the former emperors, are nothing more than legends and history. Now, whatever I say, it doesn't matter. That time has passed, no one cares about what happened then, and I'm at an age where I don't have to care about anything. Still, I really want to tell you this story. If you forget how the past years have passed, you will lose your roots, and it will be difficult for you to stay on the right track in the future. You will make the same mistakes that you have made in the past, and then, in the end, the whole world, will pay a huge price again to correct it. So, in any case, I would like to ask you to be quiet and listen patiently to the nagging of this old woman of mine. Just do what you have to do as children of the clan.

For so many years, I didn't know how to start this story officially. Because I can't find the beginning of it. It has no beginning. Its source is far-reaching and untraceable.

Well, let's start from the first day I meet you again.

I beg your pardon for always referring to "you" as "him" in the story. I can't use such a distant term for this person as "he". This person's relationship with me is too close. Yes, even closer than the former emperor. If I want to tell those past events, I can only assume that I am confiding and reminiscing about this person. I can only use the title "you" to start this memory. For me, he will always be "you" and never "him".

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Actually, I didn't know you from that moment. We didn't just start meeting at that moment. That was just the beginning of my realization that I knew you, and the conscious starting point of the time I had missed you for so long. Our birth and our memories are not synchronous. We realize that the encounter with the other person and the actual encounter with us do not happen at the same time.

I was born in your family. I lived under the same roof with you before I was born. I've seen you since I was born. Your eyes have been on me before I can remember anything, you have already touched my little hands and feet, you have already called my name. But I didn't know anything at the time. I don't know my birth, I don't know the death of my parents, I don't know my name. I see you, but I have no concept of you, no idea about your gender, character, name and deeds, and what kind of relationship we have. You mingle in the various rays of light in this novel world, and there is no separate outline at all. Just like I can't distinguish myself from the world yet, I can't distinguish you from me. I look at you with the same curiosity as I look at my own little hands and feet.

At that time, although I also saw you, although I also babbled at you, I cried at you, and I smiled at you, but I didn't have any memory of you, so I didn't have a special love or disgust, let alone such unforgettable thoughts and nostalgia now. I'm like that, with big eyes that have been clear and bright since I was born, and I look at you clearly without any sorrows, joys or thoughts.

That's how you came into my life.

And when I began to understand the names and concepts of things, and began to be limited by them, when I was taught what is called day, what is called night, what is right, what is wrong, what is male and what is female, what is good and what is bad, what is love, what is hate, what is bitter, what is sweet, the outline of a world begins to emerge from the void, and then I am imprisoned in it.

The captivity of my heart began long before I married Liu Shen and imprisoned my heart on my own. By this time, I had all the means to imprint you, but you no longer appeared in my eyes. At first, you were recuperating from illness, then because of apprenticeship, and then because you had the ability to serve the country and shine on the lintel, you gradually moved away from this family for more and more reasons. Your home gradually becomes a virtual existence, like a god enshrined in the lobby, like a portrait of your mother hanging in the second hall.

On all ordinary days, you are just an empty courtyard where no one lives, on all special days, you are just an empty seat where no one sits, you are just an identity without an object, just a familiar name. You are the future master of the family, everyone knows that, but you just never showed up. So, at that time, I always had a distant, vague curiosity about you. I still don't have any impressions or ideas about you in my head.

In the period after I was 4 years old and before I was 13 years old, sometimes I would listen to the servants in the family talk about you, and I would listen to my uncle and father talk about you. People talk about some things you did at home when you were a child, about you as a toddler, about your mother, about your life in Cheongcheon and about your skills. When I hear and see these things, I think to myself, "What kind of person is the person being talked about, the future head of the family?" "I'm searching for you in my memory. However, those searches are all blank in conclusion. I didn't have the determination to find any results, so I thought about it, and then it flowed away as naturally as countless thoughts.

However, I have a certain kind of kindness and friendliness towards you, who has no impression. Because, we have a lot in common. For example, our mothers only exist in portraits, and we didn't grow up in our own homes. You have a family and a business, but people are never here, it's almost just nominal. It's like my own home, which only exists in the will of a posthumous title. I understand the feeling of looking at a portrait of my mother and not having any memory of her. I also understand the feeling of seeing the outline of a home and never being able to get in. When I don't have an image of you in my head, I am naturally inclined to approach you.

Time passed day by day. You are always absent on all occasions. You seem more and more unreal, like a silver ticket that can never be cashed, suspended in the air of the house.

So, in those years, I thought that we would only have some kind of faint relationship in this life, a nominal brother-sister relationship, and that's it.

I know that I will soon be on the same path that all girls will take, that I will be fifteen or sixteen, and that I will marry out of this house, and that I will take root in another, bigger house, and I will be another woman like your mother, and I will do what my aunt is doing every day now, and then I will have my children. They will call you uncle, but they will not have a chance to see you until they grow up and become officials.

Because I had an estranged relationship with you, I didn't have that deep feelings for your mother at that time. In fact, my feelings for my aunt are more real. From a very young age, I have always wondered why I can't call my aunt, who has always raised me, my mother, in a formal setting, and the beautiful lady who hangs on the wall as my mother. Whenever I call her mother according to the rules, my eldest brother Jingyun will look at me with such eyes, as if he has been bitten by something in my voice.

I didn't want him to look at me like that at all, because I had always regarded Jingyun as my only brother, and I loved him as if I were my true blood brother, and I obeyed and depended on him for almost everything. Even if he used to do that to me since I turned 12, I still can't get rid of this mental inertia that I have built up since childhood. I was never able to see Jingyun as an enemy until he helped me finally see him as an enemy.

Jing Yun has always held a grudge against you since then, and he thinks that it was your entry that planted hostility towards him in my heart. He hates you to the core, and will put you to death. He thinks that if you hadn't come back, even if he had done something like that to me later, I wouldn't have developed such a strong hatred, and I wouldn't have thought of shooting him anyway. It was your presence that separated me from the intimacy I had with him since childhood, and it was you who provided me with the technology and weapons to shoot him. If I hadn't shown such a strong hatred, he wouldn't have been kicked out of the family by his father. That's how his logic is. And to ask myself, I can't say that he is completely unreasonable.

The reason why I hate Jingyun so much, and I feel that I must use his life to compensate for my loss, is indeed because of you. Your presence and closeness, your love and warmth, let me experience another possibility of life. I am attached to that possibility that is so sweet and so beautiful, I cling to it and cannot leave, I can no longer muster up the courage to leave you and return to solitude, so when Jingyun interrupts this possibility through his savage and selfish actions, I feel that I cannot survive, and I cannot forgive him for destroying my only way into that happy life. I can't wash away that shame, that shame makes me almost impossible to appear in front of you, and the thought of me having no shame to face you, let alone live with you, loses the softness and restraint I once had, and I have the strongest sense of revenge. Then I made a series of decisions of extreme actions: I decided to end my own life, I decided to end Jingyun's life, I decided to end the life of my fetus and Jingyun's, and I thought that only by destroying the root cause of everything in this way could I remove the deep shame caused by that crime.

After such a long time, I finally saw the narrowness and ambiguity of it. However, the consequences have already been done. Things just went on like that, and everything couldn't start all over again.

Just when I no longer thought I would have any more intimate relationship with you, fate made you reappear in my field of vision.

And from the first day you reappeared, you were deeply imprinted in my consciousness in that unique way, and it will never be erased. War, separation, death, sickness, time, old age, or loneliness cannot wash you away.

You didn't come back to my life little by little, you stepped into all my cells in one step.

From the moment I realized that I was reunited with you, you were tied to my life. From the first moment we met again, we were in a relationship where if I let go of you, or if you let go of me, I would lose my life.

This relationship becomes a long-lasting model that has a powerful impact on our destiny.

That day was Qingming. We met on a day that is intimately linked to death and remembrance.

Because this is how we started, we will end this way.

This is logical.

I have nothing to complain about fate. I'm just ashamed that I didn't have the courage to take it on.