Both Sect Heads Wanted Out of the Marriage, So They Tried to Ruin the Town Together novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: Four Seconds Too Long
The lantern swung around the boathouse, and Luoyi still had one hand on the barge rail and the other in the back of his robe.
"Hello?" called the Inspector, cheerful as a bird. "Is someone at the mooring post?"
Luoyi's skirts were rucked to her hips.
Zhuyuan's sash was hanging off the rail.
The saw lay on the planks behind his heel, shining.
"We're finished," Luoyi whispered.
Zhuyuan yanked her skirts down with one hand, took her face in the other and kissed her.
It was meant to be the kind of kiss actors do in a play.
It went on four seconds longer than that.
She counted them afterward, many times, in the dark.
His mouth was hot and still a little unsteady from what they had just done.
Her palm went flat on his chest and stayed there.
The wrench in her other hand hit the planks with a clang.
They broke apart.
"Oh!" said the Inspector, ten feet away, in a nightcap with a tassel. "Oh, how lovely. I'm so sorry, my dears."
"Not at all," said Zhuyuan, an octave too high.
He had stepped in front of the saw without looking down.
It was a graceful step, and it hid nothing.
"What is that gleaming behind your feet, Head Jiang?"
Luoyi stopped breathing.
"A saw," said Zhuyuan.
"Why is there a saw?"
"I am carving my wife a lantern," said Zhuyuan, with the calm of a man stepping off a bridge. "In the traditional Silverbell way."
The Inspector put a hand to her heart.
"A handmade lantern," she breathed. "That is exactly what I tell the Concord. Young people have no patience for craft."
She wrote it in her notebook, wished them a lovely night, bowed to the mooring post and went back up the lane, whistling.
Luoyi waited until the lantern turned the corner.
Then she punched him in the arm.
"The traditional Silverbell way."
"I made it up. I regretted it before I finished the sentence."
"Now you have to carve a lantern."
"I know," said Zhuyuan, miserably. "I can't carve."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Both Sect Heads Wanted Out of the Marriage, So They Tried to Ruin the Town Together are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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