Chapter 2
And so I entered the palace again.
The enviable part was that His Majesty personally escorted me inside.
The humiliating part was that I arrived tied up like a rice dumpling.
The young emperor walked ahead with his hands clasped behind his back, while I followed every step like an honest old ox. Every attendant around him was taller. Whenever he lectured them, they had to bow their heads and bend at the waist, like a field of stunted wheat.
I remembered that he was only seventeen or eighteen, still young enough to be growing, yet already burdened with governing an empire.
The previous emperor had departed in a hurry and left behind a single son. Court officials eagerly recommended their daughters to extend the new sovereign’s bloodline, and the young emperor acquired an enormous harem at an equally young age.
When he appointed his first noble consort, he had not even been as tall as she was.
I still remembered standing behind Father to witness the new emperor’s first consort-investiture ceremony. The empire’s pillars and their families had gathered in complete silence, holding their breath as they watched a child place a ceremonial crown on a woman a head taller than he was.
Unable to help myself, I had grinned silently at the absurd sight.
The young emperor stood expressionless on the dais, sweeping the crowd with a cold gaze. When he caught me smiling, I quickly stopped.
I never imagined that three years later, I would become one of his consorts too.
The instant we crossed the palace gate, he ordered the servants to take me to the imperial kitchen and told me to make him a sugar figurine.
If I shaped it well, he said, he would reward me by making me a noble consort.
The little eunuch beside him hurriedly protested. “Your Majesty, you mustn’t! The Empress Dowager—”
The young emperor cut him a glance sharp as a blade, and he fell silent at once.
I suspected I had misheard. “Your Majesty, a sugar what?”
“A sugar figurine.”
“What figurine?”
“A sugar figurine.”
“What kind of sugar?”
His thin lips pressed into a line. In a deceptively gentle voice, he asked, “If your ears are useless, why keep them attached to your head?”
Enlightenment struck me. “Oh, a sugar figurine!”
Despite buying myself all that time, I still could not work out why he wanted one so urgently.
Long, long ago, I had slipped over the wall at night and learned the craft from a vendor at the night market. After mastering it, I would stand at the street corner making figures for fun and give them to children who watched with hungry eyes.
But molding sugar was a street artisan’s skill, hardly something a sheltered young lady on her first escape from home should know.
Pretending to struggle, I fashioned an ugly, misshapen figure and handed it to him.
He studied the poor thing for a long while. “You have captured some of Zhu Bajie’s spirit.”
“Your Majesty,” I explained promptly, “that is Chang’e.”
The corners of his mouth dipped. He looked me up and down for a long time, his voice suddenly icy. “Are you truly Yin Chuchu, or did she find someone to impersonate her?”
The speed of his change in attitude was breathtaking.
I nodded with utmost sincerity, privately thinking that he gave my ability and intelligence far too much credit. If I possessed tricks like that, how could I have failed to escape his grasp?
His mood visibly soured. He tossed my figurine aside and said flatly, “Boring. We are leaving.”
After he left, he did not come to see me again.