Chapter 3

“What did I do to make you hate me so much, my lord?”

I walked to his desk and picked up the inkstone resting there.

In my previous life, he had never let me anywhere near his desk, much less allowed me to tidy it.

He said his writing implements were precious. Someone of my station had no right to touch them; I would only sully his belongings.

Only later did I understand that he had been afraid I would discover his secret.

Now we were back five years earlier, and the underside of the inkstone was smooth and new.

Not a word had been carved into it.

I ran my fingers over the purple-and-gold stone inkstone, worth a fortune. I had heard that the stone was so hard an ordinary blade could scarcely mark it.

For the carving in my previous life to have been so deep, he must have spent years engraving “Chunxu, go die” over and over, thousands upon thousands of times.

At my question, his eyes suddenly reddened.

He glared at me through clenched teeth.

“Why wouldn’t I hate you?”

“You cling to me like some vengeful spirit, watching everything I do, every moment of the day.”

“Every morning at a quarter to four, you wake me as if you’re calling me to my death. If I lie in bed a little longer, you report me to Mother.”

“From morning till night, you hold that mint incense over me. Three sticks of incense for calligraphy, five for reading policy essays, seven for writing compositions… What I do, how long I do it, when I do it—you control all of it!”

“How many characters I write each day, how often my mind wanders, how many times my tutor scolds me… You report every last detail. You’re the pair of eyes Mother planted beside me!”

“How many times have I begged you to let me breathe when she isn’t watching? To give me a quiet warning when she’s coming? To tell a little lie when you report to her?”

“All you ever do is fall to your knees and say you wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t you understand how suffocating it is? I live under your surveillance every moment. You’re driving me mad!”

This time, I was the one who stared at him in bewilderment.

A precious life and a worthless one really were different.

He said I did not understand.

And I did not.

A young gentleman raised in such luxury—how could being watched drive him mad?

All he had to do each day was read and practice calligraphy.

What easy work that was!

He did not have to plunge into a bamboo grove crawling with wild snakes in spring, digging for shoots to make the stir-fried pork his master liked.

He did not have to stand beneath the fiercest summer afternoon sun, catching cicadas with a sticky bamboo pole so his master could nap in peace.

He did not have to tend pots of precious chrysanthemums through autumn, then spend all night gathering and preparing the flowers for tea so he could still serve his master by day.

He did not have to wash, again and again with icy well water in winter, the silks that were worth more than a servant girl’s life.

…

All of those were my chores.

For some reason, a word I had heard from a storyteller on the street came to mind.

“Precious.”

The young lord really was being precious.

What a master considered suffering looked like a blessing to a slave.

If I could read and write, sit the examinations and become an official, I could not imagine how happy I would be.

I would gladly study day and night and work a hundred, a thousand times harder than he ever had.

He had no idea how fortunate he was.

At that thought, a little contempt slipped into my smile.

“You’re right, I don’t understand. You studied so hard for so many years, took first place in the metropolitan examination, then burned all your effort to ash.”

“Nor do I understand why you hate me when it’s the marchioness you should hate. I’m only a slave born into this household. My life and my family’s lives are in our masters’ hands. I can only obey.”

“Why don’t you dare hate the marchioness?”

“Why didn’t you dare write, ‘Mother, go die’?”

I raised my eyebrows and looked straight at him.

At that moment, he was no young lord. He was only the cowardly Liang Yanchun.

He pressed his lips together and lowered his head in fear, avoiding my eyes.