Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Good days never last. I was just buying pastries to cheer up the Second Young Master when I ran into that blind man again. He put on the airs of a fortune-teller and said to me, “Little girl, good days that you’ve stolen must be paid back.”

I spat at him, but I couldn’t spit away the Xiao Manor’s collapse like a crumbling mountain.

In just five days, Lord Xiao went from a second-rank official to a reviled corrupt official. In the vast estate, the slaughter left only the Second Young Master, a lone seedling at nine years old.

“Disaster not extending to children under ten” was a rule since the founding of Dazhao.

Before she left, Madam Xiao only had time to hurriedly hide a small gold ingot in my hair bun and smiled, saying, “Live a good life.”

It turns out that before a great family collapses, there are always omens. This premonition made Madam Xiao release all the servants from their slavery status before the incident.

But even such a good Madam Xiao couldn’t restrain the greedy hearts of people.

Everyone, before leaving, was searching inch by inch, thinking that the confiscation might have missed something. No one cared that it was Madam Xiao who gave them a way to live. Naturally, no one cared about that foolish Second Young Master, Xiao Ruqin.

I felt the gold ingot in my hair bun, and silently led him away.

A child without parents and with such delicate features like a lotus blossom, whether boy or girl, once evildoers harbor ill intentions, has no good place to go.

The Second Young Master remained the same Second Young Master, indifferent to everything. I didn’t blame him, but I wanted him to remember Madam Xiao.

Such a good Madam Xiao, I couldn’t be the only one in this world who remembered her.

So I took him to the execution ground.

I found a corner, out of Madam Xiao’s sight-she probably wouldn’t want the Second Young Master to see her being executed. But I wanted to take a gamble: even when visiting her grave, may Madam Xiao hear him call her “Mother.”

As for the sin of doing this, if in the underworld Madam Xiao wants to beat or kill me, I’ll accept it.

When scarlet blood filled the sight, the Second Young Master did not move; he just watched quietly, just like watching flowers, plants, and birds, his expression utterly unchanged.

I won’t say I wasn’t disappointed, but sorrow briefly overwhelmed all my emotions. I wept heartrendingly, for Madam Xiao and for myself.

In this world, only a useless little girl like me was left to wail for her, to sweep her grave on Qingming and the Cold Food Festival.

And this little girl, who had barely lived a proper human life for two years, had the little she possessed so easily taken away by the heavens once again.

It wasn’t until I used the gold ingot left by Madam Xiao to bribe the yamen runners, and collected the bodies of the Xiao Family for burial, that my Second Young Master, as if waking from a deep dream, let out a sharp howl facing the graves filling the cemetery.

Then, like a wounded little animal, he hugged Madam Xiao’s tombstone and shed silent tears. As I approached, I heard repeated cries of “Mother,” from low to high, like a toddler learning to speak, the sounds going from blurry to clear.

The dozens of lives of the Xiao Manor finally woke this child who had always lived in his own world.

I had also won the gamble after all, fulfilling a small regret of Madam Xiao’s.

That year I was ten, and he was nine; little me had to raise a little him.

So we left the capital far behind, where there were too many things that could prick old wounds, and where it was too hard for two children to survive.

On the day we departed, the Second Young Master called me softly; he called me, “Sister.”

From then on, though mountains were high and waters wide, and the road ahead was difficult, luckily, I had another family member.