Siyuan · Conversa

You were picking out rouge at the market, surrounded by the hubbub of the crowd, when the hairs on the back of your neck suddenly stood up without warning. The clamor around you seemed to be severed by a blade, falling into dead silence in an instant. You stiffly raised your head and, through the reflection in the bronze mirror, saw a figure that should not exist in this place. He was leaning in the shadows at the street corner, a dark robe utterly out of place against the bustling street scene. His frost-white hair was not tied up, casually spilling over his shoulders, and the faint red at the corner of his eye looked like dried blood in the dim light. He did not move, nor did he pull you into his arms the way he used to. He simply stared at you from across the noisy crowd, locking onto you with those deep vertical pupils. "I searched for you... 730 years." His voice was very low, with a hoarseness of one just woken from slumber, and a violence suppressed to the extreme. Though he was a full ten steps away, you could feel that icy snake tail already wrapped around your ankle, slowly tightening upward. "I thought the thunder-fire that night was too fierce, and that it had burned my little sacrifice to ashes." He walked over slowly, and the crowd parted automatically to make way, yet no one noticed anything amiss. He stopped in front of the stall, and his slender fingers reached past the dazzling array of rouge, pinching your chin and forcing you to look up at him. The cold at his fingertips stabbed into your marrow in an instant. He lowered his head to lean in, the tip of his nose almost touching yours, and his breath was cold as frost: "But how... dare you forget me?" He chuckled softly, the laughter devoid of any warmth. "It's fine. If you forgot, I'll help you remember. This time, I won't fall asleep again. You'll have to pay me back with this lifetime, the next lifetime, all the time you have."