[interlude: narrative]

Aornis has some regrets. She doesn't regret antagonizing Luo Binghe to begin with, but she is beginning to regret the frequent memory wipes. There's a lot to keep track of. Additionally, she's discovering that what Claudius said was completely correct. It's all too routine. Too irritatingly banal. There's caution and curiosity at the start of each dream encounter with Luo Binghe – but it inevitably escalates into a repeat of the exact same scene. He begins to annoy her and then she taunts him with the fact that he can't remember anything about her when she clearly knows so much about him. He then uses Thursday Next against her, which unfortunately, is always an easy road to further irritating her. That's when she reveals how much she knows about Shen Yuan – which is almost too easy of an opening. Doesn't he know? Doesn't he realize what she's done to Shen Yuan's memories over the past few months? She asks, with a slight arch of one perfect eyebrow.

That threat is traditionally when it escalates into aggression. Most nights, he's the victor – and that's fine. It's perfectly fine. He's more powerful than her, both in the dream realm and also in reality. She's a mere human woman, after all. It's an empty victory for him and in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, since she wipes his memory of it the moment she wakes up. She – quite literally – gets the last word in.

Then why was she so irritated with him so quickly last night? And why did he say something so out of the ordinary? Is it because they're both starting to feel like a fictional character from her own world, caught in the same narrative over and over again?

They were at that pivotal point, the one where he discovers that the same thing has been happening over many different, separate nights, the point where he is typically the aggressor. "I won't let you get away with this," is what he usually says, or something along those lines. Stereotypical. Heroic. Boring.

"That's pathetic," Luo Binghe said.

"Excuse me?" Aornis asked, affronted and mildly taken aback.

"Repeating the same thing every single night. Taking the coward's way out by wiping your opponent's memory." His smile was cold, haughty. "Perhaps it's familial. No wonder you're on a mission of vengeance."

She looked at him for a long moment. Her tone of voice matched his smile, cold and sharp. "What the hell do you mean?"

"If your brother was as pathetic as you, then he deserved to die," he told her.

That time, out of rage, she was the victorious one – but when she woke up, it felt like an empty victory. Even now, finishing her perfectly flawless pink manicure, she feels the rage simmering under the surface. Nobody insults her dearest older brother.

It's time to change the narrative (again).