Chapter 2

Chapter 2

After entering the General’s Mansion, I stayed by Old Madam’s side.

Yiyu entered the mansion the same day I did. She was the old steward’s granddaughter, and her life had been much better than mine.

But she never used that to bully anyone. On the very first day, she took my hand and sat with me beneath the covered walkway, listening to the rain as we talked.

“My grandfather has worked in this mansion for forty years. He knows better than anyone that Old Madam has the heart of a bodhisattva.

“So look-if even the old steward dares to send his own granddaughter to serve beside Old Madam, that proves this place is practically a paradise. You don’t have to be so timid and cautious anymore.”

On the day I entered the mansion, Old Madam gave me twice as much indenture money as the others and told me to send it home for my mother.

Old Madam heaved a long sigh and said to me, “People outside only see that my family has been a line of military men for generations, all brave and skilled in battle, as if the Wuqu Star itself descended to earth. But all of that is the work of killing, and it takes years off one’s life.”

When she said such things, she looked just like the old folk in our village who waited for their soldier sons to come home. “Look at this great sprawling mansion. In the end, all that’s left is this white-haired old woman and one grandson. Others may see honor and glory, but all I feel is desolation.”

Whenever the Young General went off to war, Old Madam became especially talkative.

And I was someone who could sit still. I copied Buddhist scriptures beside her while she rambled on about these things. She did not need me to answer; it was enough that I listened.

After enough time had passed, she would take out the scriptures I had copied when I first entered the mansion and had only just learned to read, then smile and say, “I’ve taught so many maids to write, but you learned the best and the fastest.”

I answered her honestly, “Old Madam gives me so much money every month that even my mother’s health has recovered. I must do well in the tasks Old Madam gives me. Otherwise, I would feel ashamed to accept it.”

My mother still gave birth to a daughter, but I used my monthly wages to threaten my father. If he forced my mother to keep trying for a son, I would stop sending money home.

The money I sent was enough for my useless father, who had been a coward half his life, to build a new house and buy a whole pen of cattle and sheep. He did not dare disobey me.

And all of this-whether it was because Old Madam was truly kind by nature or because she wished to accumulate blessings for her descendants-was a favor she had shown me. I could not forget it.

So when she wanted to change my original name, Zhaodi, I took the initiative and said I had thought of a good name, and hoped she would allow it.

I wrote it on paper, and Old Madam and the gathered maids read it aloud once. “Nianfeng.”

Yiyu laughed at me. “There’s a young soldier under the Young General named Ruixue. You two make quite the pair.”

I knew this Ruixue. I had run into him on my second day in the mansion.

That day, I was going to deliver soup to the Young General, but I did not know the way. After turning this way and that, I somehow ended up just outside the western side gate.

A young guard stepped forward to stop me. It was the very one who had spoken to me at the temple, the one with fair, delicate features and bright eyes.

When he smiled, the pair of dimples by his mouth became even sweeter. He asked me, “What kind of soup is this, that it has to be carried out of the mansion for a stroll before someone can drink it?”

I drooped my head, my brows knotting tightly. “Oh no. The very first task Old Madam gave me, and I can’t even get it right. What am I supposed to do?”

Seeing that I was about to cry from anxiety, he quickly grew serious. “Don’t panic. Where are you taking it? I’ll find a girl to lead the way for you.”

The moment he heard it was for the Young General, his face broke into a smile. “Oh, it’s for the Young General. Then I can lead you there myself.”

The young guard led the way while helping me carry the soup, leaving me with the sight of his back, straight and tall as bamboo.

When we reached the crowded area before the door, he handed it back to me and said softly, “Just pretend you carried it here the whole way yourself. I never came in, understand?”

I nodded stiffly and watched that young man, his smiling eyes curved like crescent moons, slip quietly back into the play of light and shadow.

After that, whenever I delivered something to the Young General, I would deliberately take a detour past the western side gate.

It was not until I passed by carrying a fox-fur cloak and heard another guard call him “Ruixue” that I finally learned his name.

Round and round I went-not only that winding path, but also the feelings I could not speak aloud.

So when Yiyu teased me about Ruixue back then, I hurried forward and clapped a hand over her mouth.

Amid everyone’s laughter and joking, my face turned red, and I could only defend myself in a small voice. “It’s not like that. I’m Nianfeng, not Fengnian…”

Only Old Madam’s smile slowly faded, and she let out a long sigh.

Seeing this, everyone stopped laughing. Then they heard Old Madam say to me, “Nianfeng is a thoughtful child. Everyone follows me in praying for my grandson’s blessings, but you are the one who remembers me.”

When the year is abundant, people live longer.

That was a common half-line from the Spring Festival couplets pasted up every year in our countryside.

I hoped Old Madam would be blessed with fortune and longevity, that she would live to a hundred. It was only much, much later that I understood the meaning of that long sigh of hers-

To watch her husband and son return wrapped in horsehide, to spend decades as the white-haired one sending off the black-haired young, perhaps such longevity was itself a kind of torment.