“It’s not my fault I’m an attention-seeker.”
“You did the annoying button thing to get my attention?”
“What can I say? Despite being a genius, I’m extremely pathetic when it comes to certain things.”
Rui caught the underlying meaning in his words. In this strange library in a stranger hotel full of magic, away from everything and everyone, stripped of duty and burden, all she wanted was the truth. But to get to the truth, she had to stop lying.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” she said haltingly. “I went into the room with the funny door. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have intruded.”
A faint blush bloomed on Zizi’s cheeks, but he looked impressed. “You figured out the voice spell?”
“Yes.”
“And you saw my sketchbooks?”
Rui could only nod.
“Did you...doyou like my drawings?” There was a different question in his pale blue eyes.
If he’d asked her the same question another time, she might have hada different answer. But all she remembered was that feeling in her heart when Madam Meng commanded her not to see him again.
“I haven’t had much time to consider the details of your work,” she replied, “but I think I do.”
Zizi saw the other answer in her smile. Laughing, he took her wrist, guiding her down to him. She nestled close, laying her head on his chest.Oh no, she thought, listening to the beat of his heart,this is nice.
Don’t get used to it, was her next thought.
“Does your head still hurt?” she asked.
“I’m fine now. More than fine now that you’re here.”
A rogue giggle escaped her. She was mortified. Who was this infuriating boy who’d turned her into someone whogiggledat a line like that? Rui tried to glare. “I can’t believe you said that out loud.”
“Made you laugh,” Zizi said smugly. He twirled a lock of her hair around his fingers and tickled her nose with it.
“I’m changing the topic.” Looking at the shelves above them, she asked, “Why aren’t there any words in the books?”
“Truthfully? I don’t know. I’ve asked Gran, but she says some stories are meant to be hidden and never told or something ludicrous like that.Ithink it’s a place she set up to add to the mystique of the hotel. It’s all part of the brand.”
Rui doubted that. There was somethingalivein the library.
“This is my favorite place in the whole estate,” Zizi confided. “Surrounded by blank pages, the promise of beginnings with endings yet unwritten... it’s hopeful, isn’t it?”
“I never thought you to be an idealist.”
“Not an idealist, but a romantic,” he corrected. “Speaking of stories, there was this legend I read a long time ago, a creation myth of sorts from an ancient civilization. Want to hear it?”
“Sure.” What she really wanted to tell him was that she would listen to him speak all day, that it was what she did whenever she visited his shophouse, when she’d curl up in the old armchair, pretending not to payattention as he grumbled about his work. Secretly, she’d hung on to every word he’d said. But it was only now that she was admitting to herself why she did so.
Zizi cleared his throat softly. “A long time ago, when the first mortals arrived in the world, they looked weird as heck. Or at least, they’d be weird to us now. Each human had four legs and four arms and two heads, all joined together at the torso, which was spherical, like a ball—”
“Gross.”
“Shh—anyway, the gods were afraid the humans would challenge them and defeat them. So the gods struck the humans with lightning, splitting each in half. Not only were their physical bodies separated, but their souls were also cleaved into two. From that day on, each human felt the loss of their matching half. They would weep and bleed from the wound, and they spent the rest of their lives doomed to search eternally for the other half who would make them whole again.” Zizi paused dramatically. “The end.”
“The end?” Rui repeated.
“That’s all the story there was.”
