chapter 2

chapter 2

The first formal meeting with Jiang Shen in this life was rather awkward, because a crowd of people knelt around us. At first only my attendants had knelt, but when Jiang Shen began to cry, everyone he had brought dropped to their knees as well.

I coughed. “Perhaps we should send them out first?”

Jiang Shen waved a hand, then said, “If a word of what happened in this room gets out, you know what the consequences will be.”

As if rehearsed, everyone on the floor chorused their assent, then filed silently out.

Once we were alone, I scrubbed haphazardly at my face. “Jiang Shen, you’ve really moved up in the world. So imposing now.”

He cupped my face, examining it from side to side, then squeezed each of my arms. At length he said, “You’ve gotten so thin.”

Only when washing clothes by the river did I get a clear look at my face. Bronze mirrors were hazy, while my reflection in a well looked frightening. I had learned that when a person became too thin, her cheeks hollowed out. It was not nearly as pretty as I had imagined whenever I clamored about losing weight in my previous life. Worse, the whole face looked exhausted, the eyes dull.

Most commoners I saw in this age looked that way, worn down by life and constrained by poverty. Wang Yinyuan, brilliant and full of life, was an exception.

Jiang Shen had grown handsomer, his bearing steadier. In our previous life, when we were both ordinary people, he moved with an elegance and style I often mocked as pretentious. Now his position and power made that manner perfectly natural. He was like a pretty stone transformed over years of sediment into jade.

I swallowed. Before I could move, he tilted his head and kissed me.

It was a soft, cautious kiss, both a confirmation and a comfort.

Like all people reunited after a long separation, we showed one another, a little awkwardly, the lives we had led apart. He too had arrived five years ago, in the middle of the sacrificial rites that formally invested him as Crown Prince. Ritual officials had guided him through the whole ceremony, and he only realized he was the Crown Prince when everyone else knelt.

“They said there were celebrations among the common people too. Did you… hear about them?”

I shook my head. “I arrived and immediately became depressed.”

Jiang Shen stared, his grip tightening around my hand.

“I’m better now. Who wouldn’t get depressed after being sent to ancient times? Weren’t you?”

“No.” He smiled bitterly. “Everything was too chaotic. I studied secretly at night and pretended nothing was wrong by day. Everyone I knew was gone anyway, so I told myself I was the only living person in the entire world and everyone else was an NPC… That was how I got through it.”

We leaned quietly against each other. “I’m here now,” I said. “I’ll stay with you.”

Jiang Shen pressed his face to the back of my hand, then left a familiar kiss upon it. “Yes. You’re here.”

Later, I often wondered: when I saw Jiang Shen on that long street, how could I possibly have escaped?

He would certainly have come looking for me, and I had no choice but to obey the Eastern Palace’s command. Once there, even if I had immediately caused a scene and demanded to be sent home, the Crown Prince would still have taken me away under ambiguous circumstances. I was his woman, and would remain so for life.

I had to convince myself there had been no escape.

Only then could I believe none of what came afterward had been caused by my own choices—neither by my stupidity in still treating the Crown Prince as my modern lover, nor by my naivety in failing, after five years, to grasp the cruelty of ancient life.

Let us return to that night, with its warm crimson gauze bed, when I spent the night with the boyfriend I had not seen in five years.

Everything felt so natural, as if Jiang Shen and I were merely sharing an elaborate game of role-play. The eunuchs and maids assigned to watch the bed were dismissed. I asked whether he could keep eunuchs from serving in my rooms in the future.

“They frighten me a little.”

Reading of such a fate in books was different from confronting it in person. The thought of the consummate victims of feudal oppression standing in my room every day always chilled me.

Jiang Shen whispered, “Me too. Women’s bound feet frighten me.”

Common women did not need to bind their feet, since it hampered their work—or rather, there was no need unless they hoped to marry into the upper classes. My parents had not bound mine.

I pushed myself upright and pulled away from him. “Where have you seen a woman’s bound feet?”

Oh, Lu Yi. Poor, pathetic Lu Yi. A ruler casually mentions a form of suffering that maims human beings, and all you care about is where he saw a noblewoman’s feet.

The next moment, Jiang Shen’s words froze every drop of blood in my body. “Lu Yi, there is something I haven’t told you… I have a wife.”

Back in modern times, I had loved tragic romances. Sometimes before sleeping, I even imagined Jiang Shen betraying or failing me and wept under the covers. My friend told me speechlessly that I had never suffered in love and was inventing misery for myself.

Perhaps it had been an omen.

My mind went blank. I threw on my clothes and tried to leave, but Jiang Shen caught me tightly.

“Lu Yi, where are you going?”

Where indeed? This was the Crown Prince’s Eastern Palace. Guards stood outside, the palace gates were locked for the night, and the city beyond was under curfew.

Jiang Shen embraced me from behind.

For the first time, I realized I was locked inside.

“It happened a year ago,” he said. “I didn’t know you would come. I’m the Crown Prince. I had to marry.”

There was nothing false in that statement.

But still—”Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Bitterness filled my throat. Of course he had to sleep with me first. Even before that, he had to keep me in the Eastern Palace for a day. While I still believed him my lover, while I regarded our union as the most natural consummation of love, he had regarded it as my chastity.

Chastity which, once successfully destroyed, would bind me to his side.

And in this world, his understanding was the normal one.

I remembered my parents’ trembling and tears. I had thought they merely feared the imperial family. Once you enter the palace gates, the sea is deep indeed. How amusing you are, Lu Yi! You truly thought this was a simple reunion with an old friend, and that you would come right home!

Jiang Shen’s embrace tightened. “I knew you wouldn’t accept it… but I cannot live without you. Lu Yi, from the moment I learned you were in this world, I could no longer imagine you anywhere but beside me.”

With a trace of panic, he said, “I’ll treat you well—better than I ever did before. I can give you the finest of everything now. Lu Yi, believe me.”

I no longer had the strength to tell whether his emotions were genuine or performed. Then something even more important occurred to me.

“…We used no protection.”

No. There was no protection to use.

“I can’t have a child.” I turned and clutched his lapels. “Contraceptive medicine—do you have any?”

There was almost pity in Jiang Shen’s eyes. “Those medicines merely poison you with mercury. You know that.”

“Giving birth here is a brush with death… Jiang Shen.” Understanding dawned. “This was part of your plan too, wasn’t it?”

He did not answer. Instead, he gently tied my clothes. “The Imperial Medical Bureau has the best physicians. Lu Yi, nothing will happen to you.”

I stared at him, dizzy.

Jiang Shen had promised to treat me better than before. Yet before, he had never treated me badly. Even during sex, he was so gentle it felt like lying upon clouds, and if I experienced the slightest discomfort, he stopped immediately.

Every time, he carefully checked that our protection had worked and never made me worry.

Now all of it seemed no more than preparation for tonight. I had willingly stepped into a trap, an open conspiracy, a scheme any true ancient girl would have seen through at a glance. Whom could I blame? Given his present age and identity, was it really so difficult to anticipate that he might have a wife and concubines?

Even if he had no wife, did I expect him to make someone like me Crown Princess?

I wanted to laugh—at myself, of course.

Reuniting with Jiang Shen had made me cast everything else aside, as if we truly were the only living people and this world a game. I had even wondered whether finding him signaled the game’s end. Perhaps we would discover a way back to modern times together, and I would wake to the familiar light on my ceiling.

There was nothing. There was only a real world, and me, still utterly alone.

I had a chaotic dream.

First, for the first time in ages, I dreamed of my modern home. My parents were dressed in their best. When I asked why they looked so smart, Mother flicked my forehead. “Jiang Shen is coming to ask for your hand today. Have you forgotten?”

Like me, Jiang Shen had studied law at university. He found a good job after graduation. Young, well educated, with a brilliant future before him, he was popular with the elders. Though he came from a single-parent household, we had dated since high school, and our families knew one another well.

When our school discovered our teenage romance and summoned our parents, his mother held my hands and said, “How did such a good girl ever take a liking to my son?” My mother looked at Jiang Shen and said, “Such a handsome boy. My daughter has some skill.”

Whether in reality or in dreams, the scene of my parents waiting for his proposal was always warm and harmonious.

But Jiang Shen never arrived in my dream. The door opened on a stern woman followed by a train of maids carrying gifts.

“Who are you?” my parents asked.

The woman smiled. “I have come on my husband’s behalf to take your daughter as his concubine!”

My parents saw nothing strange in this. They merely asked, “Why have you brought so little?”

“Your family lacks propriety. Your daughter threw herself at a powerful man, and now she is no longer a virgin. She isn’t worth much.”

Dazed, I saw my modern mother’s face become Mother’s face in this life. Holding a handful of embroidery needles, she tried to stab me and roared, “Have you no shame? Becoming a concubine! I didn’t raise a good daughter so she could become a man’s mistress!”

I recoiled into the stern woman. She stopped Mother and said politely, “Madam, I am her lawful mistress now. She has nothing to do with the Lu family. If anyone is to beat her, it must be me.”

Mother knelt. “Please discipline her severely.”

The world shook violently, on the verge of collapse. I opened my eyes to find Dicui shaking me awake.

“Talented Lady, you were having a nightmare. You kept calling for your mother.”

Every lamp in the room had been lit. Dicui took a cup of tea from a young maid and held it to my lips. “This will calm your nerves. Please have a little.”

Still terrified, I sipped some. Another maid wiped my sweat with a hot towel, and only then did I realize cold sweat had soaked me through.

After the younger maids withdrew, Dicui whispered, “Is the Talented Lady worried about greeting the Crown Princess tomorrow? Her Highness is very kind to those beneath her. You need not worry.”

Ever since my position as a Talented Lady of the Eastern Palace was settled and Dicui formally assigned to me, she had become far more talkative.

I really had become Jiang Shen’s concubine. The thought remained unreal. A concubine of the Eastern Palace required neither a bridal procession nor formal registration. Jiang Shen merely had to inform the Crown Princess. Dicui swiftly changed how she addressed me and offered her congratulations.

“Do you think I have a fortunate life?” I asked.

Dicui beamed. “His Highness took a fancy to you at a single glance on the long street. Fate was at work. Others could beg for such fortune and never receive it.”

Only then did I notice Dicui’s pleasing round face and clear brows and eyes. When she gazed at you in devoted loyalty, she seemed ready to walk through fire for your sake. Her joy was no pretense. She sincerely celebrated my good news, my good days, and my bright prospects, though only days ago she had not known me at all.

“What do people outside say about me?”

“Naturally, they all say the Talented Lady has wonderful luck and blessings. Everyone wants to share some of your good fortune.”

Wonderful luck. A peasant’s daughter, not yet fattened enough to round out her cheeks, had flown onto a high branch and become a phoenix. What luck could surpass that? The thought brought a smile even to my face.

“Dicui, bring me the cashbox.”

She soon returned with it. The monthly allowance from the Imperial Household Department gleamed untarnished: new silver ingots and strings of coins, with small pieces of silver scattered among them for tips. I weighed an ingot in my palm.

“I’ve never seen one this large at home. How many taels is it?”

“Five taels, Talented Lady.”

“How wonderful. Even if they sold me, I would fetch only three or so of these.”

Hearing something wrong in my tone, Dicui ventured, “Talented Lady?

“Why are you crying on such a happy day?”

I scooped up some small silver pieces and placed them in her hand. “I’m happy. Share the joy with your friends. If it isn’t enough, I have more.”

Jiang Shen did not come to see me for several days, which proved beneficial. The shell of an ancient woman, shattered by his appearance, mended around me once more. Retreating inside it, I suddenly felt safe. I need not agonize over how he had treated me, how he should treat me now, or how he ought to have treated me. When others praised my fortune, I needed only to feel sincerely happy.

The Crown Prince had favored me. Silks, satins, delicacies of every kind would all be mine. Given my original circumstances, I might not even have managed to marry Wang Jinbao. What greater luck could exist?

During those chaotic, depressed years five years ago, I had understood one thing: to survive in an environment unfit for life, one must alter one’s definition of living.

This was merely the second revision.

When I emerged from my tangled thoughts, Dicui was still comforting me, praising the Crown Princess’s incomparable gentleness. I asked, “Dear Dicui, have we anything I can offer Her Highness as a first-meeting gift?”

Dicui laughed. “You are going to receive gifts from your lawful mistress. Besides, everything you use now belongs to the palace. In time, perhaps you can embroider something for Her Highness yourself.”

“I see,” I said softly. “Then will you explain the proper etiquette for meeting her one more time?”

The candle flame crackled as it had the night I climbed into the Crown Prince’s bed. Dicui carefully explained how a concubine served tea to her mistress, answered questions, advanced, and withdrew. At some point amid her voice, I fell asleep.