Chapter 60
Chapter 60: The Pitch-Pot Promise (Part 2)
The pitch-pot game began, and Sang Pu found herself inexplicably tense, fingers whitening around the arrow.
Mo Ting Feng noticed at once and leaned in, eyes bright with mischief. “I’m suddenly curious what Miss wrote. Robbing the rich to aid the poor? Stealing treasures? Taking what someone else loves?”
“How can you even guess that?”
Sang Pu lifted a brow. “If I haven’t thrown yet, Young Master can still back out.”
A smile ghosted at his mouth. He slid his hand over hers, closing gently around the arrow. “Then I have no choice but to throw with Miss. We’ll be accomplices—life or death, guilt or punishment, we share it all.”
Sang Pu laughed under her breath and, this time, let him keep his hand over hers.
They hit the pot.
When they unfolded the slip inside, two words stared up at them:
Fly a kite.
Mo Ting Feng paused, as if the wind had caught in his throat. “This…”
“If it’s difficult,” Sang Pu said, already reaching for another arrow, “we can throw again.”
He pressed her hand down lightly. “Sang Pu, I just didn’t expect your wish to be so…” He almost said small, then swallowed it.
His gaze slid to the window. “There’s wind this season. I know a place that’s perfect for kite-flying. Let’s go now.”
He set the arrow aside and offered his hand, suddenly solemn. “Miss Sang Pu—will you go with me today, for an outing to fly a kite?”
For the first time, Sang Pu reached out of her own accord and took his hand.
His palm was broad, dry, and warm—clean of wine, clean of smoke, clean of the life she lived.
Sang Pu couldn’t help thinking how unfair it was. Someone so untainted had stepped into a place like this and gotten stained, and it made her own faults stand out even more sharply.
Outside the Annex Villa, Mo Ting Feng led a tall horse whose coat was nearly pure white. Beside him, Sang Pu walked in a bamboo-colored dress. With the horse between them, the two of them still looked too striking together, drawing glances from every passerby.
Mo Ting Feng bought a kite at a general shop, then guided her off the main road and onto a narrow path toward the outskirts. He helped her up, mounted behind her in one smooth motion, and they rode out.
It was late autumn, yet this was Jiang Nan—grass and trees still held their green, the land breathing with quiet life.
Sang Pu rarely left the Annex Villa. Even when she did, she went in a closed sedan chair, carried from one courtyard to another. The mansions changed, but the pleasures inside them never did.
So the countryside felt new to her, like a world she’d only heard about in stories. Mo Ting Feng saw it in her face—an almost childlike brightness—and something in his chest softened with a tenderness that startled even him.
Who would imagine the famed courtesan of the imperial capital, always cold and aloof, would treat something as simple as flying a kite like an unreachable dream?
He slipped an arm around her waist to steady her against the horse’s gait. The reason was innocent; the closeness was not. Warmth climbed into Sang Pu’s cheeks, but she didn’t pull away.
“Today was rushed,” Mo Ting Feng said. “We’ll make do with an ordinary kite. Next time we meet, I’ll give you a wooden kite I make myself—one that can still be flown.”
Sang Pu nodded. “All right. I’ve long heard the Mo Clan is skilled in mechanisms and woodcraft. I’m curious what a flying wooden kite looks like.”
She was too close. Her breath, her warmth, curled around him until his thoughts drifted—and the question that slipped out turned reckless.
“Sang Pu… if I took you away right now, far from here, to a place where no one knows us—if we lived like ordinary people—would you be willing?”
Sang Pu went rigid. For a long moment, she didn’t answer.
Regret hit him at once, sharp and cold. He’d finally gotten her out; if he frightened her now, there might never be another chance.
The road lay quiet, hoofbeats and wind braided together. They rode in silence until a wide stretch of grass opened before them, perfect for kite-flying.
Mo Ting Feng stopped and lifted Sang Pu down as carefully as if she were something that could break. With the kite in hand, they walked into the field, and Sang Pu’s voice carried a rare, open happiness.
“This is my first time flying a kite,” she said. “I hope we can get it into the sky.”
Mo Ting Feng looked at her, intent, as if the whole world had narrowed to the line of her profile. “Together, we will.”
The heavens obliged. The wind rose.
The kite climbed higher and higher until it became a single dot against the vast sky. Sang Pu held the spool, eyes narrowed, staring up for a long time.
A short distance behind her, Mo Ting Feng watched just as steadily, as if he were afraid to blink.
“Can I ask why you wanted to fly a kite?” he said at last.
Sang Pu didn’t answer. Instead, she asked, “Do you have a knife?”
Mo Ting Feng blinked. “A knife? …Yes.” He drew a small blade he carried and handed it over. “Careful. Don’t hurt yourself.”
Sang Pu took the knife, looked up once more at the kite high above, and then—without hesitation—cut the line.
The string snapped. The kite drifted free, tail streaming, sailing away into open sky.
“You see?” Sang Pu said softly. “Unbound. How free it is.”
Mo Ting Feng understood in an instant.
The kite floated farther and farther until it vanished. Only then did Sang Pu lower her head, align the blade toward herself and the handle toward him, and return it—proper, careful.
“Let’s go back,” she said, a strange satisfaction settling over her, as if something inside her had finally gone quiet.
Mo Ting Feng’s throat tightened. “Will I… have another chance to invite you out?”
Sang Pu looked at him and smiled faintly. “That depends on what’s written on the other seven slips—and on our next pitch-pot promise.”
The sky seemed to widen again. Mo Ting Feng’s chest loosened, as if he’d been holding his breath for years.
By the time Sang Pu returned to the Sunless Residence at the Annex Villa, evening had already fallen. It was nearly time to prepare for her performance.
She changed clothes, worrying the servant boy might clear away the pitch-pot set—and with it, the slips she’d written like secrets.
Before leaving for the waterside pavilion, she carefully removed the remaining seven slips from the pot and laid them on the long table. She weighed one corner down with an inkstone, then finally stepped out.
A wind slipped through the open window. The paper lifted and fluttered, revealing four words on the exposed slip:
Run Far, Fly High.