Just as the setting sun stains the flying eaves of the Liu family ancestral home red,
Yun Cangyue hears hurried footsteps echoing down the corridor.

She lifts her head from the warm daybed to see Liu Xiyu rush into the room,
arms full of bundled bamboo strips.
Her gold-threaded skirt hem is dusted with wood shavings,
and her hair bun sits askew, like a skein of yarn clawed by a cat.

“Ayue, look!”

She dumps the bamboo strips onto the table with a clatter,
emerald eyes shining with startling brightness.

“I dug these out of the storeroom—real aged, quality stuff.
Tonight I’m making the most impressive rabbit lantern in the whole city!”

She pads over to the table.
A claw tip lightly nudges the bamboo slats.

Cobwebs still cling to the edges of the strips—
clearly leftovers from last year’s Ghost Festival offerings.

She looks up at Liu Xiyu, her ear tips giving a faint twitch—
this one always has a way of talking scraps into rare treasures.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

She gives her ear tip a little pinch, then casually pops a candied fruit into her mouth.

“Last year that lotus lantern got blown apart by the wind—
I’ve been holding a grudge ever since!”

“This year I’m making one that’s solid as iron and cast in bronze—”

Before she can finish, a bamboo strip suddenly snaps back, smack, striking the tip of her nose.

*“Even you are bullying me now!”

She clutches her reddening nose and glares at the bamboo strips—
only to see Yun Cangyue already pressing down the springing slats with a paw,
her tail sweeping over a length of hemp cord, signaling her to secure it.

As dusk deepens, the room is already littered with countless failed attempts.

For the third time, Liu Xiyu pricks her hand on a bamboo splinter.
She pulls a mournful face and thrusts her swollen fingertip in front of Yun Cangyue.

“Blow on it!”

A flick of a tail bats her hand away.
A claw tip dips into ink and writes on the xuan paper:
“Lantern-making isn’t embroidery. Brute force is useless.”

“Yes, yes—our Liu family’s great chief accountant is the most impressive.”

She slumps against the table, muttering, when her eyes suddenly light up.

“Then why don’t you paint the lantern surface!”

“Use that claw-print marking trick you used at the dye house—
it’ll be absolutely one of a kind!”

Before Yun Cangyue can protest, she scoops her up onto the worktable—
forgetting that the palette is still resting at the edge.

A silver-gray blur bolts away like lightning, yet half her body is still stained by the splashing indigo paint.

“Oh no! You’ve turned into a blueberry-filled snowball!”

She stifles a laugh and pulls out a silk handkerchief—
only to see Yun Cangyue calmly shake out her fur,
blue specks scattering like stars onto the riddle paper Liu Xiyu has just written.

“Two rabbits walk side by side on the ground—
how can one tell which is male and which is female?”

The inked characters bloom at once into indigo patterns.

Liu Xiyu freezes for a beat, then suddenly slaps the table and bursts out laughing.

“This riddle is brilliant!”

“Perfect for teasing Master Li and that bunch of old pedants!”

She gives Yun Cangyue’s blue-spotted belly a poke.

“Ayue really is a genius—
even your mishaps turn into poetry.”

As the lanterns are first lit, the two of them finally head out, carrying a lopsided rabbit-shaped lantern.

Liu Xiyu has deliberately fastened a honeysuckle-patterned cloak,
wrapping Yun Cangyue against her chest so that only her ears peek out.

The long street has already turned into a river of flowing light and stars;
the caramelized scent drifting from sugar-painting stalls mingles with the sharp tang of firecracker smoke.

Passing a riddle booth, they spot a wooden sign hung overhead:

“Solve three riddles, get a sugar painting.”

Excited, Liu Xiyu squeezes her way forward.

“I’ll give it a try!”

“One copper coin per riddle—
solve three, and you get a sugar painting.”

The stall owner taps the ceramic bowl used for collecting coins.

She hands over a copper coin, snatches up a bamboo placard, and reads aloud:

“Golden pellets roll across a white jade plate”—name the object…
“That has to be tangyuan!”

The stall owner shakes his head.
“An abacus bead.”

“Again!” She pays another copper coin.

“It travels a thousand miles without feet”—
“Then it must be a boat, right?”

“Wrong. It’s letters carried by fish and geese—
words travel a thousand miles on paper, without need of feet.”

Pouting, Liu Xiyu is suddenly stopped as Yun Cangyue reaches out with a paw to press down on her wrist, her tail giving a light sweep across the tabletop as a silent hint.

“Ayue, you know the answer?”

She narrows her eyes at the bamboo placard.
Seeing Yun Cangyue’s ear tips twitch toward the riddle ‘Moon reflected on river waters,’
understanding dawns at once.

“It’s a reflection!
‘Moon reflected on the river’—am I right?”

The stall owner freezes.
“You’re a clever one, miss…”

All the while, Yun Cangyue stays curled in Liu Xiyu’s arms,
using only ear tips and tail to hint at the answers.

Whenever Liu Xiyu guesses wrong,
she gives a light nip at her sleeve as a reminder.

When the answer is right,
she pats Liu Xiyu’s palm with a soft paw,
tickling her into laughter.

“Hey, stop it—
you’ll make me lose focus!”

After clearing three stalls in a row,
a sheen of sweat beads at Liu Xiyu’s temple.
A paw suddenly reaches out to brush aside a lock of hair stuck to her cheek.

She freezes for a moment, then suddenly buries her face into Yun Cangyue’s embrace, fur brushing her nose until it tickles.

“Ayue, you’re even more useful than a silk handkerchief.”

Passing a mask stall, Liu Xiyu suddenly brakes to a halt.

Colorfully painted masks of fox spirits, yakshas, and divine beasts hang from the bamboo racks.

Her fingers skim past a fanged, blue-faced demon mask— then flick in a sudden turn, snatching up a pair of rabbit-face masks and slipping them over herself and Yun Cangyue.

“Look! This is the true meaning of two rabbits walking side by side!”

From behind the eye holes, emerald eyes blink as she teases in a muffled voice.

“Good rabbit brother, might you have seen my little Snowball who’s gone missing?”

“Distinguishing features include ear tips that glow through the light,
and a habit of sweeping the ground with her tail to erase the evidence after burying snacks—”

Yun Cangyue shakes her head and wriggles free of the mask,
only to be scooped straight back into Liu Xiyu’s arms.

She casually picks up a bronze mirror from the edge of the stall and tilts it toward the silver-gray fluff—
and at once, the mirror reflects two lopsided rabbit faces.

“They match so well!
How about buy one, get one free?”

She flashes two fingers at the vendor,
while her other hand discreetly scratches under Yun Cangyue’s chin to keep her from bolting.

The vendor narrows his eyes, appraising them.

“Miss, these masks are sold in pairs.
No splitting them.”

“Just what I wanted!”

She pays without hesitation, then ties the slightly smaller mask behind Yun Cangyue’s ears, the silk ribbon looping around the fluffy back of her head and ending in a crooked knot.

“Wear this when we’re checking the accounts in the future—
let’s see who still dares to tamper with the ledgers!”

A paw reaches up to tug at the mask,
but Liu Xiyu suddenly leans in, warm lips brushing lightly against Yun Cangyue’s ear tip.

“This is your punishment for secretly burying my beloved pastries yesterday!”

She pulls back at once,
her triumphant laughter chiming together with the crisp jingle of silver bells.

The tingling sensation at her ear tips sends her fur exploding all over.
She arches her back and leaps up onto Liu Xiyu’s shoulder,
her tail thumping irritably against that flower-bright, smiling face.

Liu Xiyu dodges while pleading for mercy.

“Hey, hey! I was wrong!”

“I’ll bake you chestnut pastries with double the sugar glaze when we get back—deal?”

In the midst of the commotion, a mask drops with a sharp crack,
only to be crushed under a passerby’s foot.
A fracture runs from the nose down to the left ear.

She picks up the shattered rabbit face and sighs with exaggerated sorrow.

“Looks like our fate is thin as paper—mmph!”

Before she can finish, a candied plum is stuffed into her mouth,
the sweet-and-sour burst forcing her to scrunch up her face.

A flash of mischief glints through Yun Cangyue’s amber eyes.

They weave through the bustling crowd, until Liu Xiyu squeezes her way down to the stone steps by the river.

Lotus lanterns drift across the water, candlelight dyeing the ripples into flowing silk of gold.

As if performing a magic trick, she fishes a plain sky lantern from her sleeve and gives it a little shake, showing it off like a prized treasure.

“This is cloud-xuan paper I ‘borrowed’ from Father’s study,”
she says proudly.
“They say it can carry wishes weighing a thousand jin!”

A paw reaches out to poke the lantern’s surface.
As expected, the paper is fine and resilient, supple as silk.

Liu Xiyu sits cross-legged, gathering her into her lap and shielding her from the wind, then takes out a cake of spiral brow ink she carries with her.

“Come on—we’ll draw our wishes onto it.”

She starts by sketching a round-eared, stubby-tailed rabbit in one corner of the lantern, then adds a small figure sitting with knees hugged close.

When she reaches the rabbit’s paw, she deliberately lets her hand wobble, trailing a wavy line.

“Oops—my hand slipped!
Ayue’s paws are round like tangyuan anyway!”

A flick of her tail brushes her wrist, and the ink brush immediately drags a long arc across the lantern’s surface.

Liu Xiyu lets out an “oh!” and smoothly turns the mistake to her advantage,
following the ink traces to outline a sky full of stars.

“This is what you call a blessing in disguise!”

She blows the remaining powder from the paper with satisfaction, then taps a finger at the heart of the starry river.

“Wishes written here are the most effective.
Ayue—what do you want to wish for?”

Yun Cangyue turns her head away, yet her tail quietly presses down on the brow-ink brush.

Liu Xiyu understands at once.
She takes hold of her paw and guides it, stroke by stroke, writing:

“Year after year, lantern light reflects two shadows.”

The dark-inked characters are slender and spare, like bamboo—
utterly unlike her usual ledger annotations.

“Hiding your handwriting, are you?”

Liu Xiyu arches a brow and, on her own side, writes with a flourish:

“Day after day, sugar glaze sweet as honey.”

The characters are round and soft, like little sugar dumplings.

As she dips the brush in ink, she suddenly lowers her voice.

“Actually, the wish I made is—”

Before the words can finish,
a paw presses gently against her lips.

The river wind catches the sky lantern, and Liu Xiyu laughs as she lights the candlewick.

“Say nothing, then—
the lantern spirits can see it anyway!”

The flame grows stronger, the lantern swelling into a full, moonlike orb.

They release it at the same time.
The sky lantern wobbles as it rises into the night, merging with countless points of fire to form a silver river of light.

Liu Xiyu tilts her head back and murmurs,

“If we could truly have years like today,
I’d rather never grow up at all.”

Yun Cangyue watches the candlelight flicker in her eyes,
a claw tip quietly hooking into the corner of her sleeve.

Only when the lantern fades into a distant dot of orange light
does Liu Xiyu notice something extra in her palm—
a pine nut wrapped in candy paper, a sweet Yun Cangyue had secretly stashed in the hidden compartment of the brazier.

“So this is a return gift?”

She peels back the paper and slips it into her mouth.
As the sweetness melts across her tongue,
the tip of Yun Cangyue’s ear brushes lightly against her cheek.

As the night wind suddenly turns sharp, she wraps Yun Cangyue into her cloak.

The afterimage of the sky lantern has yet to fade,
but Liu Xiyu does not notice the rabbit ears in her arms snap upright—

in the air drifts a strange scent of iron rust mixed with agarwood.

It is exactly the same smell as last month,
when the dye house was robbed
and pry marks were found on the warehouse lock…

When the crowd along the river releasing lanterns has thinned,
Liu Xiyu stumbles upon a sugar-painting stall tucked in a shadowed alley.

The old craftsman is just about to pack up when she hurriedly stops him.

“Please—paint it like this!”

As she speaks, she lifts Yun Cangyue up.

“Miss, you must be joking.
That rabbit’s coloring is far too unusual—there’s no way to mix syrup like—”

“Add gold-leaf powder!”

She drops a few pieces of broken silver onto the counter, her tone easy, like someone who knows the routine.

“And draw a crooked, lopsided moon too—
it has to be as childlike as the lantern I made!”

Forced into serving as a model for a good quarter hour, Yun Cangyue holds still as the sugar ladle moves on to shaping the ears. Liu Xiyu suddenly speaks in a low voice:

“If you ask me…
you’re prettier than the moon.”

Warm amber syrup sets into a foolish-looking rabbit face.
She snaps off one ear and offers it to Yun Cangyue’s mouth.

“We agreed—sweetness and hardship together.”

When the other turns her head away, a little stiffly,
she deliberately bites down with an exaggerated crack.

“Well then—looks like a certain picky rabbit is going to go hungry!”

Yun Cangyue shoots her a glare, but in the end lowers her head and gives the sugar shard a light lick.

Without thinking, Liu Xiyu brings her sugar-sticky fingers to her own mouth.
Only when the sweetness melts across her tongue
does she belatedly feel her ears burn red.

On the way back, she hums an off-key little tune.
As they pass through a dark alley,
the rabbit in her arms suddenly goes taut—

A black shadow flickers past the corner of the wall.
That strange scent—iron rust mixed with agarwood—drifts through the air again,
stronger now than before.

“What is it?”

She follows Yun Cangyue’s gaze,
only to see a feral cat dart across the rooftops.

Yun Cangyue shrinks back into her arms,
yet her claw tips curl inward, gripping tight.

“Are you cold, Ayue?
Why are you shaking?”

She tightens her arms, drawing her little warmer closer.

“When we get back, I’ll make you sweet fermented rice balls— and I’ll secretly add double the sugar glaze!”

As sky lanterns drift upward one by one, she doesn’t notice the rabbit paws in her arms squeezing fine cracks into the sugar painting.

Translucent as glass, the tips of her ears catch the lights of countless homes— yet they remain angled toward where the shadow vanished.