Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When I was eight, driven by hunger, I was loitering outside a jewelry shop. Seizing the right moment, I clutched the hem of a noblewoman’s trousers.

Such an act usually led to one of two outcomes: if she was kind-hearted, I might get enough money for ten days’ meals; if not, she’d find me filthy, and her maidservants would beat me.

I was extraordinarily lucky to encounter Madam Xiao, who was doing good deeds to accumulate blessings for her son. She brought me directly back to the manor.

Lord Xiao was a high-ranking official of the second grade, and the Xiao Manor boasted a level of wealth I had never imagined. Best of all, even the lowliest maidservant there enjoyed a lunch with one meat and one vegetable dish, and new clothes for every season.

I had been roaming the streets since I was four, even snatching food from dogs’ bowls. In the harshest winters, I survived by eating handful after handful of snow. A blind fortune-teller at the street corner had read my fate, claiming I was destined for a solitary life and that making it past eighteen would be a stroke of luck. Yet here I was, suddenly free from worries about food and clothing, even able to pick and choose pretty clothes. In my eyes, Madam Xiao was more benevolent than any bodhisattva enshrined in a temple.

Yet deep down, I knew the one I should truly thank was the Second Young Master. Though others whispered behind his back that he was a simpleton-at seven years old, he hadn’t spoken a single word-on the day I entered the manor, he directed an “Ah” at me. This overjoyed Madam Xiao, who immediately took me as a genuine lucky star and placed me by her side as her senior maidservant.

Being a senior maidservant meant I received the highest monthly allowance, enjoyed much flattery, and could stay by Madam Xiao’s side at all times. And Madam Xiao was the kindest person I had ever met in this life.

She gave me a beautiful name, saying my eyes were as bright as the stars in the sky, so I should be called Fanxing. She would take my hand and teach me how to write, stroke by stroke. Claiming I was too young to do much work, she sent me to supervise the young ladies of the manor during their lessons, but instead instructed the tutor to set a small stool for me by the door so I could listen. Even though she had known from the moment she picked me up that I was nothing more than a lowly, wretched beggar from the streets, she still occasionally enveloped me in a gentle embrace.

Those who envied me often hinted, openly or not, that it was all just to pray for the Second Young Master’s blessings-that I was no more than incense burned in a temple. But what of it? That tender kindness was something I truly savored. For a girl who had grown up all alone, for the first time, a longing beyond mere satiation arose. I only secretly called her ‘Mother’ in my heart; surely that wasn’t a desecration of someone so noble.

Naturally, I also had extra patience for the Second Young Master. After all, without that ‘Ah,’ I would have at most become a junior maid in the outer court.

The Second Young Master had a rather eccentric temperament. When anyone addressed him, he would merely gaze at the flowers and plants on the ground or the birds in the sky. Only when Madam Xiao called his name would he look at her, and nothing more. Having raised him for so long without ever once hearing him call her ‘Mother,’ she occasionally couldn’t help but murmur this regret even to a little girl like me.

To soothe this regret for Madam Xiao, I deployed every trick I had learned on the streets: cricket fighting, cockfighting, singing little tunes, shadow puppetry-from refined arts to rough games, I tried them all. After spending so much time pestering him, I became the second person in the Xiao Manor he would actually look at when spoken to.