Chapter 3

I watched my daughter become my sister’s shadow, day by day.

Her features, her tastes, her expressions—little by little, they all resembled hers.

At last I broke down, weeping and insisting on changing the child’s name.

Lu Jin gave me one icy glance, his voice cold as frost.

“Have you finished making a scene in front of the child?”

I wasn’t making a scene.

I only wanted my daughter back. I only wanted to keep my husband.

Then, one day, my sister sent word of her third condition.

Lu Jin was to help her divorce her husband and bring her home.

Utterly desolate, I took up my brush, wrote a divorce agreement, and placed it before him.

He took it and looked at it for a long time. At last he raised his eyes, exhaustion written all over his face, and sighed.

“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.”

Something inside my chest snapped at those words.

Like a string held taut too long, finally coming slack, inch by inch.

I didn’t cry or make a fuss. I felt utterly hollow, as though my soul had scattered.

Lu Jin bought a courtyard house next door and settled my sister there.

Only a wall stood between us, yet it divided two separate worlds.

Ah Yao grew increasingly estranged from me. Whenever anything happened, her first thought was to ask my sister.

My marriage faded too. When trouble at court vexed Lu Jin, he preferred to cross to the other side of the wall and sit talking with her.

Warm candlelight glowed in that courtyard. Faint laughter drifted out.

It was as though they were the family of three, while I was merely a passerby listening through the wall.

My health deteriorated day by day.

I had never suffered a serious illness growing up. I never imagined a single chill could lay me so low.

I drank countless bowls of medicine, so bitter they numbed the back of my tongue, but I never improved.

Ah Yao visited a few times. Each time, she stood far away and said, “Aunt sprained her ankle, and she still made pear cakes for Father herself.”

Then she turned and left.

I died the day before my thirty-sixth birthday.

The breeze was gentle in the courtyard, the sunshine warm.

My maid held a bowl of medicine and quietly begged Ah Yao to persuade me to drink it.

Ah Yao stood beneath the veranda, impatient and plainly uninterested.

“Is she sulking again? She’s a grown woman, refusing her medicine because it’s bitter. I’m not a physician. What good would my coaxing do?”

“If she won’t take it, let her be. I can’t make her.”

That night I vomited blood and collapsed onto the bed, clutching my chest.

My maid panicked. Ignoring my protests, she stumbled out and fetched Lu Jin from next door.

He came in haste, his clothes still carrying the scent of wine and a faint trace of pomegranate blossoms.

The sight of blood at my lips stopped him short. Then he hurried forward and gathered me into his arms.

His arms trembled so badly he could scarcely hold me.

All the habitual coldness and indifference on his face shattered, leaving only bewildered fear.

“Tomorrow is your birthday…”

“Your sister, Ah Yao, and I have already made plans to celebrate it properly… Why won’t you take your medicine?”

“Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“What have I done to make you treat yourself this way? Was it… was even marrying you a mistake?”

Slowly, I lifted a hand and covered his eyes.

The old people used to say that if a loved one’s tears fell on someone who was dying, they would weigh the departing soul down and make its journey difficult.

I didn’t want to bear a single tear of his anymore.

“It was a mistake. All of it.”

“If we could start again… don’t marry me to repay your debt. Please.”