Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I no longer had a little sister.

The brothel madam said my little sister had died last year.

Her wrinkled old face, caked in powder and rouge, haunted my dreams over and over again.

“Oh, what a shame. That sister of yours was such a pretty little thing. She was even the top courtesan of my Yuehua Pavilion for a while.”

“Young Master Zhang was very fond of her. Why, he paid a fortune to have her all to himself for several nights.”

…

“Don’t tell me any of that. How did she die?”

“…”

“Before the New Year last year, Young Master Zhang got his hands on some Western Regions Divine Drug. He said smoking it could send you straight to paradise, and he insisted that she join him.

“Your sister simply wasn’t blessed enough to enjoy such a fine thing. She took a couple of extra puffs and never came around. It frightened Young Master Zhang so badly that he stayed away from my Yuehua Pavilion for months. Since you’re her elder sister, why don’t you compensate me for those months of lost business, as well as her funeral expenses…”

I couldn’t remember how I got back.

All I knew was that someone kept wailing in my ear, making my head feel as if it were splitting apart.

I forced my eyes open through the pain and found Jiang Suisui howling at the top of her lungs, babbling nonsense like, “Don’t die!”

Turning my head, I saw that even the Old Madam, who usually doted on Jiang Suisui, had covered her ears in exasperation.

“Suisui, you’re too loud.”

The taste of blood filled my throat, and my voice came out hoarse and rusty.

At the sound of it, Jiang Suisui stopped dead. She stared at me with her huge eyes, then burst into an even louder cheer.

“She’s alive! Big Sister is alive!”

The Old Madam said this ordeal had nearly frightened her to death as well.

I had been unconscious for two days, breathing out far more than I breathed in. When they finally managed to find an itinerant doctor, he took my pulse and immediately declared that my heart meridian was damaged. If I didn’t wake up, they might as well prepare to collect my corpse.

The Old Madam tried to comfort me. “Jinque, I heard about your sister. But you’re still young. You have a long road ahead of you…”

My heart felt numb. Even making an expression seemed exhausting.

“She wasn’t supposed to die. I should’ve come sooner.

“She was timid even as a child. She must be crying in terror in the underworld. I might as well go join her.”

Seeing that I had lost all will to live, the Old Madam couldn’t stop her tears from falling.

“In the past, a single word from the Duke’s Manor would have been enough to obtain justice for your sister. But now, I can barely protect myself.

“Jinque, I can’t lose anyone else. I’ve seen what a good child you are these past few days. You mustn’t do anything foolish.”

Jiang Suisui threw herself at me too.

“Big Sister, don’t die.”

The Old Madam stroked Jiang Suisui’s head and said earnestly, “We may only be pretending to be grandmother and granddaughters, but Suisui truly sees you as her big sister. From now on, she’ll be your real little sister. The three of us can live as a proper family. How does that sound?”

A proper family?

Could I still have a family?

I looked at Jiang Suisui’s little face, so full of worry, and somehow found myself nodding.

And just like that, this tiny courtyard brought together a once-exalted mistress and a resentful servant and turned them into a family.

The two of them fed me some rice porridge and told me to rest well and stop thinking about anything else.

But if people could choose what they did and didn’t think about, how could there still be so many troubled hearts in this world?

I couldn’t sleep, nor did I dare to.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that little girl with her hair tied in two pigtails, crying as she asked me,

“Big Sister, why did you take so long to come?”

As I tossed and turned, I suddenly heard a long sigh.

The Old Madam sat before the medicine stove, lost in thought.

The Jiang family were either dead or sold off, and now she was nothing more than a lonely old woman. I couldn’t help feeling that we were suffering the same fate.

“Are you thinking about the people from the Duke’s Manor?”

The Old Madam had just told me to follow Jiang Suisui’s example and call her Grandmother, but I still couldn’t bring myself to say it.

So what if I was being rude? It wasn’t as though she had anyone around to beat me for it now.

I had always been the sort to push my luck. I knew she couldn’t bear to beat me anymore, just as she couldn’t bear to beat Jiang Suisui.

But the Old Madam shook her head and told me to hurry up and rest.

I knew at once that something had happened.

After I questioned her over and over, the Old Madam finally gave in to my relentless pestering. She glanced at Jiang Suisui, who was sprawled out fast asleep, then lowered her voice.

“When you collapsed, I couldn’t run, so I had Suisui go out into the streets to find a doctor.

“But… but…”

At this point, anger appeared on the Old Madam’s face.

I grew anxious too. “Did she fall? I’ve told her so many times to watch her step. If she fell flat on her face, she’d be the one suffering!”

The Old Madam was so annoyed that she rapped her cane against the ground. “Stop interrupting me.”

“She went to find a doctor that afternoon, and by evening, someone came to our home claiming to be from the Zhang family. Their young master saw our Suisui on the street and took a fancy to her. They told us to make the necessary preparations. In two days, they’re coming to carry Suisui away as his concubine!”

The Zhang family?

The Young Master of the Zhang Family?

Zhang Shizhao!