Chapter 5

Perhaps it was because Zhou Zhixu was there, but little by little I fell asleep against the door.

Not long afterward, Aunt Xing’s cry woke me.

The servants must have discovered Zhou Zhixu was missing and searched everywhere before finally finding us.

The door opened. Aunt Xing stood in the doorway, her face livid.

The distant sky was dark. Dawn had not yet broken.

Zhou Zhixu seemed to have fallen unconscious. Ah Fu and the other servants hurried away, carrying him and shielding him.

I knelt on the floor, still not quite taking it in.

After a long time, Aunt Xing drew a deep breath.

To my surprise, she did not scold me fiercely again.

She merely looked down at me, her expression difficult to read.

“What… what are you sitting there for? Hurry after them! The young master needs you by his side now.”

I got up and stumbled after her, ignoring the ache in my legs.

Only when we reached the bedroom did I learn that Zhou Zhixu had developed a fever.

His health was poor to begin with, and the weather was so cold. Of course he could not withstand such exposure.

No one knew how he had inched his way to the ancestral hall alone in the middle of the night.

Aunt Xing sat beside his bed and held his hand, her eyes overflowing with worry.

Without a word, I went over to the basin a maid was holding and wrung out a cloth.

“Let me, Aunt Xing,” I said softly. “I often looked after sick people at home. I know what to do.”

She hesitated, then gave up her place beside him.

Very carefully, I laid the cold cloth on Zhou Zhixu’s forehead.

Feeling my touch, he half opened his eyes and gave me a weak smile.

Even now, he was still smiling.

He knew his own body better than I did.

Then why had he come to find me?

For three days, the entire household tended Zhou Zhixu as though facing a siege.

The entire household, I say, but there weren’t many people left in it.

After his parents died, the Zhou estate had visibly declined. It could no longer afford so many servants, and many had taken their severance money and gone their separate ways early on.

Most of those who remained had received kindness from the family and stayed to repay it.

Aunt Xing was one of them.

The maids told me her husband had been a gambler. He had fallen into a pond and drowned while drunk, leaving Aunt Xing with a young daughter.

Later, her daughter had caught a chill and died as well.

Aunt Xing had held her daughter’s body and wept and wept. Her grief had cost her the sight in one eye, leaving it clouded with gray.

Someone told her that if she kept clinging to her daughter like that, the child would be unable to be reborn.

So Aunt Xing had held back her tears and buried that tiny body high in the mountains.

When she was about to throw herself into a river, Lady Zhou happened to pass by and stopped her.

Lady Zhou had been an accomplished painter, famous for her depictions of deities, Buddhas, and bodhisattvas, and a woman of great kindness.

She had dealt with the trouble caused by Aunt Xing’s husband’s family. Then she explained that she had recently given birth and had a young son who needed care. Would Aunt Xing come to the Zhou household as his wet nurse?

Master Zhou had been a wealthy man of leisure, easy to get along with, who never interfered with his wife’s decisions.

Aunt Xing had stayed ever since.

She regarded Zhou Zhixu as her own child. To him, she was no different from a second mother.

In those days, the Zhou household had been at the height of its prosperity, its rooms filled with distinguished guests.

Nothing like the emptiness of the house now.

On the fourth day, Zhou Zhixu’s fever finally broke, and the sky finally cleared.

That morning, he slept peacefully on his bed while sunlight poured freely through the carved window lattice, casting beautiful shadows.

Without looking at me, Aunt Xing tucked in his quilt. “You’ve worked hard these past few days. Go and rest.”

I paused, saying nothing.

She turned and looked at me with her one clear eye. “If the young master wakes and sees you so exhausted, he won’t be pleased.”

Only then did I rise cautiously.

“I’ll go back to my room, then,” I said. “Thank you, Aunt Xing.”