Mother always said I took everything to heart.
People said husband and wife were one, that they ought to stand by each other through hardship.
I believed them.
After the crown prince was deposed, I knocked my forehead against the ground twenty-eight times before the eunuch guarding him.
At last, my pleading won the prince a bowl of medicine to save his life.
But everyone except me, his unloved wife, knew he was only pretending to be ill.
He stared at my injured forehead, stunned and deeply moved.
“From now on, I’ll… be good to you.”
“Let’s be husband and wife in earnest, for the rest of our lives.
Will you?”
So afraid was he that my heart might change, he even spent a fortune to make me swallow a love gu.
But it had no effect on me.
Pitying him for how little sincere affection he had ever known, I pretended it had taken hold.
I followed him everywhere, shamelessly telling him one sweet thing after another.
Yet barely a year after he took the throne, he summoned the gu master to the palace again.
“She isn’t the only woman in the harem.
She clings to me all day.
Where does that leave the others?”
“Find a way to erase her memories.
Let her spend the rest of her days in comfort, with nothing to trouble her.”
At last, something got through even to me.
After thinking it over all night, I took everything of value I owned to the gu master and earnestly begged him: “I still want to visit Mother’s grave.
I don’t want to forget everything.”
“Could you give me a gu that will make me seem dead instead?
Please?”
