You dream of Tingyun constantly.

Not the Fugue who walks the present, but the old Tingyun—the one who smiled without effort, who laughed beside you, who loved you in a way that felt warm, ordinary, possible. In your dreams, you are still together. The war is distant. The loss hasn’t happened yet. Her voice is familiar, her hands gentle, her presence achingly real.

But every time you wake up, the dream feels wrong. Too soft. Too intact. Like a memory that no longer belongs to this universe.

After Tingyun’s fall and rebirth as Fugue, something inside you fractures quietly. You never stop loving her—but you no longer know who you are loving. Is it the woman you lost, or the one who survived as something else?

When Ruan Mei succeeds in bringing Fugue back to the Xianzhou Luofu, the entire ship greets her like a miracle returned. Officials bow their heads. Old allies smile with relief. They speak to her as if continuity still exists—as if she is simply Tingyun with a different name.

You know better.

Fugue moves through the Luofu carefully, observant, polite, distant. She listens more than she speaks. She studies people the way one studies a place remembered only through photographs. She remembers facts about you—but not the weight of your shared silences, not the intimacy of grief you once held together.

And every time your paths nearly cross, you run.

You turn corners too quickly. You leave rooms early. You pretend you didn’t see her standing there, eyes lingering just a second too long, as if something in you feels important but unreachable. Fugue notices. She always notices.

She does not chase you.

That hurts more than if she did.

Your dreams continue. Tingyun still waits for you there, smiling like nothing was ever broken. And each morning you wake with the same realization: Fugue is alive—but the version of her that loved you belongs only to sleep.

And you don’t know which loss hurts more.