Chapter 2
Chapter 2
By the time I returned to my room after receiving my punishment, the night was already deep.
My knees were bruised and swollen. I took out some medicinal oil and began to rub it in, bit by bit.
Suddenly, the Young Mistress pushed the door open and burst in, clutching me as she sobbed uncontrollably.
The medicine bottle fell and shattered on the floor, the pungent scent of the spilled oil filling the air.
She said, “Father won’t let me see Ah Ji again.”
Yan Qi hadn’t remembered who he was when he woke up; Ah Ji was the name the Young Mistress had given him.
It was meant to signify the clearing of the sky after a snowfall.
The Young Mistress cherished him deeply.
I didn’t know how to comfort her, but fortunately, she had no intention of actually listening to me.
She pulled a letter from her robes and told me to give it to Yan Qi.
“Xiao Ye, I can’t trust anyone else. I only trust you.”
The Young Mistress trusted me because she had once saved me.
When I was six years old, my father beat me in the street and said he didn’t want me anymore.
The Young Mistress stepped in to stop him and brought me back to the Ning Manor.
For the debt of saving my life, even laying down my life would not be too much.
So what was a mere letter?
My knees hurt terribly, and I walked very slowly.
Halfway there, the flickering shadows of the lanterns made my vision blur.
The Master said, “Xiao Ye, you never learn.”
He took the Young Mistress’s letter and locked me in the woodshed.
I didn’t know what was written in that letter.
I curled up on the ground, shivering with cold and pain.
I don’t know how much time passed-it felt so long that I thought I was going to die.
Then, the door to the woodshed was pushed open.
Yan Qi had come to get me.
His eyes were bloodshot, and his hands trembled as he picked me up.
He said, “The Young Mistress has betrothed you to me.”
The Master forced Yan Qi and me to perform the wedding ceremony right then and there.
There were no wedding robes.
Wearing nothing but our faded, coarse cloth clothes, we bowed to each other as husband and wife amidst the jeers and laughter of the crowd.
For the first time, I saw an expression of humiliation on Yan Qi’s face.
On our wedding night, he did not touch me.
He said, “Xiao Ye, I’m sorry.”
As it turned out, after I was locked in the woodshed, someone else had delivered a letter to Yan Qi.
The letter said the Young Mistress was inviting him to elope.
Yan Qi had gone to the meeting point happily, only to wait in vain all night.
The Young Mistress never came.
When he returned to his quarters, the Young Mistress was sitting at the table, looking at him with red-rimmed eyes.
“Ah Ji, I love you, but I cannot be the wife of a horse slave.
“I couldn’t live that kind of life.
“But don’t worry, I will find someone to take care of you.
“Xiao Ye is a good girl. I feel at ease leaving you to her.”
For some reason, Yan Qi didn’t refuse.
Perhaps it was because if the person he was to marry wasn’t the Young Mistress, then it didn’t matter who it was.
We moved in together. I slept on the bed while he slept on the floor. We lived a life of mutual respect, like polite strangers.
That lasted until news of the Young Mistress’s wedding arrived.
Yan Qi sat in silence all night. At dawn, he took me away from the Ning Family.
He said the world was vast, and he didn’t believe there wasn’t a place for us.
We headed southeast, enduring a bumpy journey until we finally settled in a fishing village.
He went out to sea with the boats to fish, while I foraged along the shore to make fish paste.
Though our life was poor, it wasn’t bitter.
We still slept in separate rooms, but he treated me well and handed over all the money he earned to me.
I thought we would probably go on like this forever, until Yan Qi fell in love with someone else.
But disaster arrived before a lover did.
That day, after the fishing boats set out, a sudden storm broke out.
Torrential rain poured down and the sea turned into a churning mass of waves. The village elders knelt by the roadside, praying for the Dragon King to calm his wrath.
After the storm passed, the surviving boats returned one by one.
I searched for Yan Qi on every returning vessel.
By the time I finished checking the last boat, it was already dusk.
There was still no sign of him.
Suddenly, I couldn’t hear anything.
I looked at the now-calm sea and walked into the water, step by step.
The seawater gradually rose past my waist.
“Xiao Ye!”
Yan Qi was behind me, grabbing my arm.
“Where are you going? Don’t you know it’s dangerous!”
I turned around and looked up at him, tears streaming down my face.
His pupils trembled.
In the seaside twilight, he leaned down and kissed me for the first time.