Chapter 3

I took the sachet, surprised.

Not knowing what to say, I murmured, “Oh.”

Xie Fuyu propped his head on one hand and watched me with a soft laugh.

“Is there anything you care about?”

“You clearly care about them. Why do you always act so cold?”

When we were children, my sister fell into the water and Mother made me kneel as punishment.

Then my brother threw out the cat I had raised for six years, for my sister’s sake.

And then the marquis’s heir, who had grown up with me, turned and asked for my sister’s hand.

In all my eighteen years,

I had always thought it was best to remain indifferent.

Without attachment, there could be no hurt.

But this man taught me how to open my heart, how to smile, how to fight for the things I cared about.

I did not know whether he was right.

Still, I believed him.

And it proved a terrible mistake.

When my sister sewed a mugwort pillow for the old madam, I learned to sew one too, and took it to her.

When my sister went kite flying with the fifth young lady, I insisted on joining them.

I began to fight for Xie Fuyu’s love. I would not let him go to wine houses or spare another woman so much as a glance.

My sister liked playing chess, but the heir was often busy.

So, when she had time, she would sit down with Xie Fuyu in the pavilion for a game. They always had plenty to say to one another.

I would not let Xie Fuyu go there either.

“No means no,” I protested.

“I want you to stay in our courtyard and tend the flowers with me.”

At first, Xie Fuyu agreed with a smile. Later, he began to tire of my constant demands for his company.

Until, one day outside the study, I heard him giving the fifth young lady quiet instructions.

“When you go boating with our sister-in-law tomorrow, get up early. Don’t let your third sister-in-law hear you.”

“Or she’ll make a fuss about coming along again.”

He sounded exasperated. “I don’t know when she became so petty, always fighting our sister-in-law for everything…”

After they left, I leaned against the veranda alone for a long time.

I had never been able to compete with my sister at home.

Even married into the marquis’s household, I had lost again.

The old madam began urging me, sometimes openly, sometimes obliquely, to give way.

The fifth young lady remained closer to my sister.

On the day my sister accidentally fell into the water and miscarried, the entire household came to see her. They called in every sort of renowned physician and procured all manner of prized medicines.

The heir sat at her bedside. His gaze caught me at the edge of his vision.

“Third Brother,” he said coolly, “she is not welcome here.”

“If she hadn’t spent every day competing with Ruyue, why would Ruyue have become so depressed that she lost the child?”

Silence followed.

No one spoke for me.

I looked at Xie Fuyu. He lowered his eyes. “Go outside for now.”

The February snow fell heavily.

I stood beneath the veranda for a while, until the snow had soaked my clothes.

It was very late when Xie Fuyu finally emerged.

He went home preoccupied, saying that all the female medical attendants in our courtyard were to be lent to the heir’s household.

I knew he blamed me.

But I still said,

“Since winter came, I haven’t been well either.”

It was true. After the chill I had just caught, my head was spinning.

My whole body felt heavy.

Xie Fuyu stopped as if he had never known me at all.

“Meng Shiying,” he said coldly, “I remember when you were nothing like this.”

“Being so petty, fighting for things that were never yours, will only make people sick of you. Do you understand?”

With that, he swept out.

He did not come back that night.

My head felt as though it would split. I sank into a heavy sleep, with a twisting pain low in my belly.

The next morning, panicked maids hurried in and out carrying basins of bloody water.

Only then did I learn that I too had been carrying a child.

And that it too was gone.

No one else in the household knew.

My maid asked, “Madam, shall we tell the old madam and the others?”

I turned my face away.

“Never mind.”

I wanted to take back everything I cared about, every feeling that had broken through my once-frozen heart.

But I could not take any of it back.

During our cold silence, I watched him bring home woman after woman who looked like me.

I watched everyone in the Xie family gather around my sister, who had just lost her child.

The grief tore through me,

hurting more than all the unfairness I had suffered at home as a child.

I died in misery.

Even in death, I did not want to see Xie Fuyu again or remain in the Xie household.

For the first time, I wept and begged Mother. I asked them, for the last shred of affection between us, to arrange for my body to be switched.

To bury me elsewhere.