A high-pitched whinny cut through the darkness, echoing across the fields. Luhan perked up at this, wiping the sweat from his forehead after setting the mucking rake aside. He jogged out of the stall he had been cleaning to the stable entrance, expectantly listening for the sound of hooves and a particular girl’s footsteps.

In the soft moonlight, Luhan could only make out the outline of the approaching figures, but a wide smile stretched across his cheeks. Mei departed from the eternal shadow of night and set foot into the man’s warm gaze, leading a white stallion behind her. 

“Thanks! I chased him for a good hour around the paddocks, but I guess he only listens to Master Yixing and you,” Luhan chuckled good naturedly. He glanced at her face, subconsciously awaiting her to return his smile.

She patted the horse’s nose when it snorted. Her lips curved upwards as Luhan had wanted---but it was much too empty and distant to be classified as a smile. His heart dropped to his stomach.

Walking alongside her as they took the stallion to its compartment, Luhan ignored his slight disappointment and continued, “And Master Jongdae’s new colt won’t budge an inch from his stall, so I haven’t been able to muck his yet.”

“Ahh,” Mei murmured in recognition, nodding her head. “He’s a real beauty.” This time, it was her eyes that curved into a small smile, and Luhan was blindly charmed by it---he almost ran into the head of a horse that was leaning its neck over the stall door.

Recovering quickly from the near miss, he added on playfully, “And he’s a reaaaaal stubborn one.”

She nodded. “That’s true. I’ll try to coax him out.” Her uneasy expression held no trace of the smile that had been there just a moment ago; it made Luhan doubt if he ever saw it in the first place.

Mei wasn’t a person of too many words, so Luhan wasn’t bothered by how short and insipid her replies were. But what alarmed him was the desolation in her eyes; they were too empty and too emotionless, but disturbed in an unseen way. It reminded him of the eerie calm of the sea before a storm.

When they reached the stallion’s stall, Mei walked the horse inside and unbuckled the harness from its head without a word. Usually, they would be talking as they engaged in their tasks, but as Luhan observed her with a worried gaze, he sensed that something was off in this suffocating silence.

As if to prove his inkling, she absent-mindedly dropped the harness from her hand and was too absorbed in her thoughts to even notice. It was only when Luhan made a move to step into the stall to pick it up for her, that she flinched from her trance and murmured a small, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll get it.”

As she bent down to retrieve it, he noticed a pearl pendant hanging from her neck, the smooth orb as shiny and silky white as the moon.

Luhan’s heart plummeted to his feet.

Sehun.

It was an intuition that pierced his heart as a silver bullet. He just knew it; he was convinced before he could consider the reasons.  

He had never seen her wear that necklace before, and he was sure that she wasn’t wearing it this evening either, so the only person she could have received it from was Sehun, his logic concluded. But it wasn’t only his mind that admitted defeat; now he understood Mei’s rejection painfully well in every cell of his body, especially that pathetically hard-working organ that ached at the center of his chest. 

Luhan had found it strange that Master Sehun’s gaze always lingered on Mei whenever they were in the same room; she wasn’t seductive or sultry like some of the other servants that were desperate for favorable attention. And Master Sehun was a stoic, cold man; Luhan had naturally assumed that he scorned down upon love and tenderness as a foolish vulnerability like the rest of the Masters. But now he knew otherwise---that Master Sehun’s eyes instinctually searched for her because he was the same as Luhan---just another man in love.

It hurt---it really did. Luhan was so crestfallen at the realization that he didn’t feel any anger or jealousy borne from possessiveness that would have sparked within him if he weren’t the worthless servant that he was. All he felt was inadequacy; Luhan could barely afford three loaves of bread with the gritty coins he hid in one of the courtyard’s flowerpots, or could hardly keep himself from shivering in his sleep during winter nights. With Master Sehun now discretely claiming Mei as his with the silvery chain around her neck, how could Luhan ever have had the audacity to declare his love for her?

Even if Luhan had known that the pearl pendant was Mei’s to begin with and that Sehun had merely returned it to her rightful hands, he would not have been able to escape the crushing defeat that strangled his windpipe. Either truth this wicked fate chose, Mei had never meant to be within Luhan’s reach.

Luhan closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of horses, hay, and dung. Hot tears prickled the back of his eyelids as he thought about the kiss. How sweet and mellow like honey, her soft lips were---how the fleeting flavor of her reminded him of fresh morning dew on a petal of a blooming rose. Although it had only been a chaste, quick peck on her lips, Luhan had been filled to the brim with happiness and euphoria.

But now---the memory turned against him with its fangs bared; her words tore even deeper into his chest.

“Luhan. I am tainted. I am dirty and I am sinned,” she had told him

“No you aren’t---”

“You can’t love me.  You mustn’t love me. With love comes the fear of loss---the people here know the smell of fear and they feed off of it, more so than a shark that can detect a single drop of blood in the ocean. It is too dangerous and you don’t deserve to be hurt because of me.”

Luhan had only been able to stare back at her with a self-destructive blankness. He had known down deep that fate would forbid their romance, but he hadn’t expected the rejection to come out from her lips.

Mei had struggled to continue with a voice strained in grief, “Luhan. You have taught me how to smile and laugh again, and I am forever grateful to you for that. And that is all the more another reason why I cannot accept your feelings; I would condemn myself to hell if you were ever hurt because of me.”

“B-but just because I love you doesn’t mean that I will be hurt---”

“No, Luhan! You don’t understand,” She had exclaimed with pleading eyes. “You will be hurt,” a teardrop had slipped down her cheek, “Because…”

“Because…?”

“…Because I love someone else.”

And now Luhan knew who that someone was.

Mei inhaled deeply, the night air swirling in chilly wisps within her lungs, on both sides of her thumping heart. At every beat, was an overwhelming ache; in the blood that coursed through her body, were guilt, shame, self-loathing,---love. It was the kind of pain that was hideous, but beautiful at the same time.

The pain was so frighteningly beautiful, because it was pain that aroused from her knowledge that Sehun loved her.

But it was hideous to the most disgusting extent, because she was not pure, because she did not and would not ever deserve to be loved by him.

The day that Kris had robbed her of everything, from her ity to her soul to her ability to smile from the bottom of her heart, Mei had abandoned the pearl pendant in this secret library, because that was the most appropriate place to be a grave for it---for her purity and loyalty. The necklace should have been buried under years of dust, just like her massacred heart. Although she had fought and fought against Kris until was raw from screaming for him to stop and her whole body was drained of life, she still felt as if she had betrayed Sehun---she had failed in protecting what was supposed to be kept untouched and sacred for her true love---she hated herself the most because she had nothing that she could offer to the boy that had once promised to love her forever. She had left the necklace here, because she didn’t deserve to wear the gem of purity and loyalty---both of which she had lost.

But Sehun had returned it to her---both the pearl and her feelings.

Mei breathed again. The frosty air pricked her lungs with a thousand needles of ice, but it felt nice; it was a soothing counterpart against the hotness of the tears welling in her eyes.

She sat in the secret library, her hands poised over the keyboards of the piano. She was willingly drowning in the silence; the state of numb nothingness---quietus---death, appealed to her as a hummingbird was to sweet nectar.

But a lone teardrop rolled down her cheek and splattered on her hand, finally cuing her fingers to start dancing across the keyboard. From under her fluttering fingertips soared a sorrowful melody, and her tears streamed down her face as if to compete in its intensity of the rush of emotions.

She cried without uttering a sound from her lips, but let the melody voice out her true grief instead. In despair, desperation, confusion, and in pain, she and the music wept to their audience of the loyal moon and stars---

---and Sehun.

From the shadows of a large bookshelf, Sehun listened, letting the melody infect him with its overflowing woe. The tearful song wrapped around his hiding figure and for once, he felt as if he understood her genuine, unobscured pain.

Pain was a sensation that had embedded itself into each of their emotions, even happiness and bliss. By sharing her sorrow and hurting as much as she, Sehun felt as if he were one step closer to her; as if there was a slim possibility that the day they would completely understand every nook and cranny of eachother would come. His decade-old affection had been kept intact by a thread in this way.

Sehun closed his eyes and sighed. He could percieve the bleeding wounds almost all too well in the melody, but he could not decipher her true heart. He regretted so much that he had stormed out of the library the moment Luhan had landed his lips on hers. He just couldn't take it; neither his pride nor his love-struck heart. Did she kiss him back? How did she react? What did she say to him? Such questions had plagued him for the last week, the logic and compusure out of his brain like leeches. Raking his hand through his hair in frustration, Sehun shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts; to empty himself so he could be filled by Mei's music. 

Whenever Mei could not handle the distress of daily life anymore, she would escape back to the secret library and let the scarce, but pleasant memories of Sehun rejuvenate her. As she poured her repressed sadness out onto the piano, she would imagine that she was an innocent, pure child again; imagine young Sehun by her side.

She never knew he had always been there.

Sehun had visited the secret library almost every night since the incident ten years ago, betraying what conventional morality told him not to do, and earnestly waiting for her to come And she had, around a year after he had started waiting for her. But the moment he had witnessed the sparkling droplests rolling down her cheeks as she played the piano, the same as tonight, Sehun had lost all courage to let her know of his presence. He had absolutely no idea how he could console her, and he hated himself too much for failing so miserably at protecting her, that he could not approach her under this wistful moonlight. He mimicked the planets in the night sky, silently watching over her and praying that she would be find strength. For Sehun, it was the most he could do for her within the cage of his uncertainty. His life had been entirely of solitude and independence; he had been too young ro remember the love that Mother had cradled him with before she had been killed, and there was nobody left in the Manor he could trust after Baekhyun had left. Sehun didn't know how to show her his love---he was still uncomfortable with how tender he had become because of her---and he could only portray his concern for her in an unskilled way. Society would deem his unseen efforts as pathetic, but the beauty of his sincerity was incomparible to anything the world could ever offer.

And so like every other night, Sehun hid himself in the shadows and listened, his existence and his true devotion for her, only known by the shining orbs of the black sky.