Xia Xiaoman discovered the book on an afternoon when the sunlight was too harsh.
She had been sorting through files in Li Moting's study when her fingertips brushed against a gilded spine—the original French edition of *The Little Prince* emerging abruptly from a stack of business reports. The edges of its pages bore the faint yellow tinge of age, as if they had been turned by restless fingers countless times before.
"A 1943 first edition?" She carefully opened the cover, and a black card slipped to the floor. Absentmindedly, Xia Xiaoman tucked it back between the pages as a bookmark, completely missing the subtly embossed Li family crest in the lower right corner.
Li Moting stood framed in the doorway, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, revealing three parallel scars along his left wrist. His gaze tracked the movement of her coffee-stained fingers as they turned the fragile pages, his Adam's apple bobbing in an almost imperceptible swallow.
"Chapter twenty-one," he said abruptly. "Your father once translated this passage."
Xia Xiaoman's hand froze mid-reach. She did remember her father's desk always littered with translation drafts, yet no matter how hard she tried, the actual content eluded her. The book fell open to the familiar passage—the fox's lesson about taming. Beside the printed text, a penciled annotation read:
**"To be tamed is to accept the risk of tears. —S.L. 2003"**
"Who is S.L.?" The question escaped her lips before she could stop it.
Li Moting's pupils contracted momentarily. He stepped forward to retrieve the book, but recoiled as if scalded when his fingers accidentally brushed against her wrist. "My mother," he replied, his voice muffled as if speaking through frosted glass. "This was the last page she ever read."
Sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains, casting dappled shadows between them. It was then that Xia Xiaoman noticed the unnatural indentations along the spine—as if someone had once clutched it with desperate strength, then painstakingly smoothed away the evidence.