Chapter 3

# Chapter 3

Lanyi Academy’s accounts office was in the rear courtyard.

An elderly eunuch named Fang kept the books. His eyelids drooped, and his abacus clattered loudly.

He frowned the moment he saw me.

“You’re here for punishment. Don’t touch the ledgers.”

“The Tutor told me to copy them.”

He shoved a stack of old volumes toward me. “If you damage anything, you pay for it.”

I opened the first ledger.

Three thousand taels to establish the Crown Princess Academy, including repairs to the corridors, new plaster, and replacement window gauze. Everything was neatly itemized.

I turned the page.

Face powder: one hundred twenty taels.

Waist-slimming medicine: two hundred forty.

Beauty soup: sixty taels per month.

Twenty cartloads of fine sand for deportment practice: eighty taels.

I stopped. “What is the sand for?”

Eunuch Fang did not look up. “Walking practice. The young ladies balance teacups on their heads and cross the sand. A light step leaves no deep prints.”

“Is walking heavily a crime too?”

“Once you enter the palace, a master may take offense at loud footsteps.”

“Are the crown prince’s ears that sharp?”

Eunuch Fang finally raised his head. “Miss Xu, calamity comes from the mouth.”

I nodded. “And accounts come from the hand.”

He stopped answering me.

In the third volume, I discovered that the girls had not paid equal tuition.

Qin Zhaomian: two hundred taels.

Qi Tang: two hundred.

Me: six hundred.

I stared at that line for a long time.

“Found something?” Eunuch Fang asked.

“I found that my uncle has a real gift.”

His hand paused over the abacus.

“There’s no fixed tuition?”

“Officially, it’s two hundred.”

“And the rest?”

“Families may voluntarily add courtesy gifts.”

Voluntarily. What an excellent word.

By the time I returned to my room, my wrist ached from copying, but my mind was clear.

My uncle had borrowed eight hundred taels in my name. Six hundred had actually entered Lanyi Academy. Two hundred was the official tuition. The remaining four hundred had become a “courtesy gift.”

Courtesy gifts were not refundable.

But if I could prove that those gifts were not voluntary-that gatekeepers, sponsors, and clan elders had forced them upward at every step-then there was room for an argument.

I did not sleep that night. I made three charts on scrap paper.

One listed each girl’s tuition.

One listed the academy’s expenses.

One was titled “Probability of Refund.”

In the middle of the night, Qi Tang crawled over to my bed.

“What are you writing?”

I jumped. “Why don’t your footsteps make any sound?”

“I grew up in an army camp. If you make noise at night, you get beaten.”

She peered at my paper. “Probability of Refund?”

I covered it. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Qi Tang sat down on the floor and thought for a moment.

“Can I join?”

“You want your tuition back too?”

“I want myself back.”

Her voice was flat.

“My father wants to send me to the Eastern Palace in exchange for my brother’s transfer back to the capital. He says daughters have to marry somewhere, so I might as well marry usefully.”

“What did your brother say?”

“That he felt terrible for me.”

“And then?”

“Then he packed his bags and waited for the transfer order.”

She looked at me. “Can you really get the money back, Xu Man?”

“Maybe not.”

“Can you get us out?”

“Even less certain.”

She grinned. “Fine. Uncertain is still better than certain death.”

The next day, Qin Zhaomian saw Qi Tang and me whispering together. She asked nothing.

That afternoon, when no one was watching, she slipped a piece of paper beneath my book.

The Qin family paid two hundred taels in tuition and another three hundred to Clerk Yang of the Ministry of Personnel to submit my name.

The handwriting was as precise as the girl herself.

I looked up. Qin Zhaomian was embroidering an orchid. She did not look at me.

Those who shouted were not the only ones who wanted to live.