[Maybe you don't have any fear of it, but I do! But that thought is interrupted by a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach by those last three words.

He really doesn't want to discuss Mingjue with Xichen. Or others of his family, whose deaths he was responsible for in one way or another. There's simply too wide a gulf of understanding between them.

Jin Guangyao doesn't let the silence that falls after those words rest more than a beat or two. If they were not in the middle of the public garden, his entreaties might be less tempered, but as it is, his voice is calmly quiet in its pleading, again belied by the turbulent emotions underlying it.]

I'm sorry.

I know it was wrong to have suggested such a thing, but these worries are not so easy to ignore. Perhaps I spent too long worrying over it before even bringing my concern to you in the first place. Of course I trust you, to tell me if there was anything untoward.

[As if he would even notice anything at all. Jin Guangyao's own frustration is not so easily staunched, when there's already other feelings being kept in check.]

I need your patience as well, more than anything else. I don't want you to think you had been wrong.