Chapter 6: The Handkerchief

“What is this?” Xuan Xi asked.

Sigrdrífa didn’t answer.

She simply unfolded the handkerchief and handed it to her.

On the inner side of the handkerchief were two lines of embroidered characters, which looked like Eastern script.

Xuan Xi had seen similar characters in the book Records of Eastern Observations from the academy library, but she still couldn’t read the full text of that book yet.

“This was brought back from the Eastern Dragon Domain by my great-great-grandfather,” Sigrdrífa said.

“When he traveled through the East, a friend from the Eastern Dragon clan gave it to him. After he returned, this handkerchief was passed down through generations until it reached me.”

Xuan Xi took the handkerchief. Her fingertips gently traced the embroidery thread.

It felt very soft, like touching a light, fluffy cloud.

“What’s embroidered on it?” she asked.

Sigrdrífa paused for a moment.

“The first line is ‘Within the Four Seas, There Are Bosom Friends,’” she said softly.

“The second line is ‘Far Apart Yet Near as Neighbors.’”

Her pronunciation wasn’t perfect.

The tones of the Eastern language were skewed by the speaking habits of the Western Dragon clan, but she said every character with great care—as if she had practiced it many times.

Xuan Xi stared at the two lines of characters and suddenly felt her eyes sting.

She understood the meaning of those words: there are bosom friends within the four seas, and even if they are far apart, they are as close as neighbors.

“You…” Xuan Xi opened her mouth but found she didn’t know what to say.

“My great-great-grandfather wrote in his diary,” Sigrdrífa said, her voice returning to its usual flat tone, as she looked at the sunset sinking below the mountain ridge.

“He said there is a saying among Easterners called ‘Entrusting Feelings in Objects.’ Some words are hard to say out loud, so you place them in an object for the other person to discover on their own.”

She paused. “I think there’s a kind of subtle beauty in that.”

Xuan Xi lowered her head and looked at the handkerchief in her hands, at the crooked, uneven embroidered characters.

“So this is…”

“Lend it to you,” Sigrdrífa cut her off.

“You sweat too much. Use it to wipe yourself during training. Just don’t get it dirty.”

Xuan Xi looked up. The afterglow of the sunset fell on Sigrdrífa’s face, and the amethyst-colored eyes reflected the light of the evening clouds. Her expression was still cold, but the tips of her ears were tinged with the faintest shade of pink. Xuan Xi folded the handkerchief and clenched it in her palm.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Mm.”

“I’ll wash it and return it to you.”

“You don’t have to return it,” Sigrdrífa said, then added, “Forget it… do whatever you want.”

She turned and walked toward the exit of the training ground. After two steps, she stopped.

“Tomorrow.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow at this time, I’ll pass by to check on you again.”

The silvery-white figure quickly disappeared through the exit of the training ground.

Xuan Xi stood still, clutching the old handkerchief embroidered with an ancient Eastern poem.

There was a very faint scent on the handkerchief. She unfolded it and read the two lines again.

“Within the Four Seas, There Are Bosom Friends; Far Apart Yet Near as Neighbors.”

She curled her lips, carefully folded the handkerchief, and put it into her breast pocket.

“Yeah, see you tomorrow, Hig.”

By the time Xuan Xi returned to the dormitory, it was completely dark.

The lights in the hallway had already been considerately switched to night mode.

Pale blue fluorescence seeped from the gaps in the walls, dyeing the entire corridor the color of the deep sea.

Her footsteps echoed in the empty hallway—one, two, three.

Pushing open the door to Room 404, Xuan Xi realized the room had no lights on.

Sigrdrífa was sitting on her own bed, her back against the wall, a book open on her lap.

Her silvery-white hair fell loose over her shoulders, and the moonlight streaming through the window gave it a cold, gleaming luster.

The whole scene looked like a beautiful landscape painting.

When she heard the door, she didn’t look up—but Xuan Xi noticed that the page number of the book in her hand seemed to be exactly the same as when she had left this morning.

Not a single page had been turned all day.

Xuan Xi didn’t turn on the lights either.

She changed her shoes, took off her coat and hung it in the closet, and placed the Records of Eastern Observations she had borrowed from the library on the desk.

She deliberately slowed down while doing these things, as if waiting for something, or as if she didn’t want a certain atmosphere to dissipate too quickly.

There was no sound from behind the folding screen—no rustling of pages, no sound of breathing.

Well, there was breathing, but it was deliberately suppressed very softly, as if waiting for something.

Xuan Xi decided to do something. She got up and walked to the screen.

“Sigrdrífa,” she said.

“Mm.” The voice from behind the screen was very calm—at least, that’s what Xuan Xi thought.

“I wanted to say,” Xuan Xi paused, then unfolded what she was holding in her hand—a neatly folded moon-white handkerchief.

“Thank you.”

“You already said that,” Sigrdrífa’s voice came from behind the screen.

“That was this afternoon,” Xuan Xi said, looking down at the handkerchief.

“I want to say it to you once more, seriously.”

Another silence. This one stretched longer than before.

Then came an unexpected reply: “Just call me Hig.”

Xuan Xi was stunned.

The conversation from their first day of school immediately came to mind: “Your name is so long, can I call you Hig?” “No.” That was the first exchange between them, making her think the two words “Hig” would be sealed forever.

“Didn’t you say I couldn’t call you by your nickname?” she asked.

“You haven’t called me it yet.”

Xuan Xi opened her mouth, then closed it.

She suddenly realized something: Sigrdrífa hadn’t loosened up just now.

She had been waiting for Xuan Xi to bring it up. She had wanted Xuan Xi to use her nickname for a long time.

“Good night, Hig.”

There seemed to be no answer from behind the screen. But Xuan Xi heard it.

In the steady rhythm of breathing, there was an extremely brief pause—just long enough to say a single “Mm.”

Xuan Xi turned and walked back to her own bed.

She spread out the covers and lay down, still holding the handkerchief in her palm.

She pulled the blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes.

The faint scent from the handkerchief lingered faintly at the tip of her nose.

From behind the screen, the sound of turning pages finally came.

But the rhythm was a little different from before—a bit faster, a bit lighter, as if it was trying to hide something of a young girl’s heart.

Xuan Xi didn’t call her out on it. They both had things they needed to hide.

They were silent proofs. Some words didn’t need to be spoken out loud to be heard.

No words were exchanged that night. From then on, the handkerchief became something Xuan Xi always carried with her.

It wasn’t that Xuan Xi deliberately did it; it was just that every time she changed clothes, she told herself it was so she could “wipe sweat whenever needed during training.” But in truth, she also brought it on days she didn’t train, and Sigrdrífa didn’t try to take it back.

Days passed like that.

Every day at two in the afternoon, Xuan Xi appeared on time at Training Ground No. 3, and an hour later—that silvery-white figure would walk in from the entrance of the training ground.

“Just passing by.” That was always the phrase.

Xuan Xi gradually got used to this “passing by.”

Once Sigrdrífa arrived, her training content changed.

She no longer ran around pointlessly; instead, she sparred with Miss—or rather, she was “beaten up” by Miss.

In the first week, she couldn’t even touch the hem of Sigrdrífa’s clothes.

In the second week, she could hold on for a dozen more seconds before being knocked away.

On the last day of the second week, she dodged Sigrdrífa’s lightning strike for the first time—not by prediction, but by instinctive reflex.

“Not bad,” Miss said.

Only two words, but Xuan Xi felt happier than any praise could make her.

After training, the two would sit side by side on the bench at the edge of the training ground.

Sigrdrífa didn’t initiate conversation, but if Xuan Xi spoke, she would respond—with her usual short sentences, but each word seemed filtered, leaving only the most informative part.

It made Xuan Xi feel that talking with Sigrdrífa was a very comfortable thing.

No need to force conversation, no need to worry about awkward silences.

Silence wasn’t awkward—it was just two people being quiet together in the same moment.