SPOILER
1. It took several more chapters for Ilay to finally make his appearance
2. Xinlu pretty much piggy backed off of Ilay’s plan to rescue Tae to try and get to him first… and succeeds making Ilay think Tae chose Xinlu over him / was running away. Their reunion was sadly not sweet, no kicking of feet while squealing. He was graped, no foreplay, no prep, lots of tears.
3. Things do chill out and return to normal, but yeah
Apparently there’s no official english translation so you’ll notice some errors.
It also describes the tone and person who spoke after they spoke. I would wonder, “Wait, who said that? Tae or Jae?” to find out after the quote / speaking part or I would read it, and it would describe the tone of voice after the fact. I had to reread a lot of speaking bits to re-visualize the scene correctly.

I just finished reading the novel from where we let off here… and I just gotta tell y’all
to mentally prepare yourselves ╥﹏╥