To break his betrothal to my elder sister and marry me, Lu Jin agreed to three conditions.
First, on her birthday every year, he must personally bring a bouquet of pomegranate blossoms to her residence.
Second, if we ever had a daughter, the child must bear her name.
He agreed to both.
As for the third, my sister said she would name it another day.
After we married, it did bother me that he went to her with flowers year after year.
But he was gentle with me, and we were so deeply in love that I could hardly bring myself to complain.
Besides, whenever I showed the least displeasure, he would say, “Once a promise is given, not ten thousand mountains can stand in its way,” and tell me not to ask again.
What truly stuck in my throat was the way he mentioned my sister every time he called our daughter’s name.
She did not live in our house, yet she was everywhere in it.
At last I could bear no more.
I wept and insisted on changing the child’s name.
Lu Jin merely watched me coldly.
“Have you finished making a scene in front of the child?”
He resented my suspicions and grew steadily more distant.
Then my sister sent word of her third condition: he was to help her divorce her husband and bring her home.
I promptly wrote a divorce agreement of my own.
Lu Jin took it with a weary sigh.
“She’s already given up so much.
What more do you want?”
“If she hadn’t stepped aside, I would never have married you.
Had I known it would come to this, she might as well have refused.”
I was reborn on the day Lu Jin came to ask for my hand.
He handed the betrothal token straight to my sister.
“The eldest Miss Xie alone holds my heart.
I wish to take her as my wife and remain true to her all my life.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
