Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I had no idea how to get home, so all I could do was behave myself and be a maid.

Just like in my last life, when I honestly worked myself like an ox and horse, I earnestly swept the courtyards, boiled water and tended the fires, drew water and fed the birds. I did everything meticulously, day after day.

I kept comforting myself. Compared to the modern grind of writing proposals every day, pulling data analysis in Excel, and presenting reports in PowerPoint, this job was only different in category. There was no real difference between a corporate drone in a cubicle and a maid.

But I knew very well that although labor law might not have protected me back then, the Civil Code still did.

A citizen’s rights were sacred and inviolable. Unlike here, where if the masters killed me, it would be no different from slaughtering a chicken.

Natural selection. Survival of the fittest.

If I was too scared to die, then I had to endure. I had to keep my head down and cling to life.

Four years passed. I went from an unpaid trainee maid to a rough-work maid earning 100 wen a month. Then, because the Matriarch praised me for feeding the birds well, I became a second-rank maid at her side and received 400 wen in monthly wages.

Four hundred wen was no small amount. One wen could buy a flatbread. Based on modern prices, one wen was about two yuan, which meant I was someone with a monthly salary of 800.

Now that I had money, I worked even harder.

I had studied liberal arts, and my major was management. The invisible hand of the market really could not save me. As for the soap and gunpowder transmigrated women were supposed to know how to make, I did not even know what they were made of. Embroidery and needlework, the standard skills for ancient women, were not exactly my forte either.

The only thing I was actually good at turned out to be making pastries, so that was where I put in my effort. As long as the Old Madam was willing to taste a single piece, I would prepare it with the utmost care, even if it took more than a dozen hours.

In this manor, the masters were the sky. Performance reviews were decided by a single word from them. Only by pleasing them could I have good days ahead.

When I was fifteen, my superior gave me another excellent performance review.

The Old Madam praised me, saying, “No one is more well-behaved than she is. She sees what needs doing, and her heart is full of her masters. Promote her to first-rank senior maid and send her to serve the Heir.”

The Heir had been carefully raised at the Old Madam’s knee since childhood. In this century-old Marquis Manor, only the Marquis’s direct line remained, and the Marquis had only one legitimate son.

Compared to us, whose lives were as cheap as weeds, the Heir was precious beyond measure.

The Green Bamboo Courtyard where he would now live alone had been under construction since three years ago. Its layers of courtyards overlapped one after another, with carved railings and painted beams, winding covered corridors, artificial hills and ponds, and scenery to enjoy in all four seasons.

The Old Madam and the Marchioness spent two months planning before they finally assigned a complete staff to the courtyard. In the inner courtyard, there were two mamas, two first-rank senior maids, four second-rank junior maids, eight third-rank maids, and twelve rough-work maids.

Of the two mamas, Mama Cui had served the Old Madam for years and was shrewd and capable. Mama Liu was the Heir’s wet nurse, meticulous and considerate.

The first-rank senior maid Liufang had been sent by the Marchioness. She was clever and deft, excellent at embroidery, and beautiful as a flower. I was also a first-rank maid. Following the pattern of Liufang’s name, the Heir bestowed me the name Shuyu. I specialized in cooking and preparing tea.

Liufang was beautiful, and her speech was lively and straightforward. Before long, she became familiar with the Heir and served him closely. For washing, bathing, personal attendance, and the pleasant companionship of a fragrant sleeve by lamplight, he mostly used Liufang.

As for me, I took over the tedious work of his three daily meals and refreshments, social courtesies and arrangements, and the receiving and storing of items. There were a thousand threads of trivial matters, but I never disliked the trouble. Everything is difficult at the beginning; what matters is whether one has the will.

Every job an ox-and-horse worker takes on must be done seriously and done best!

Not long after I took up the post, I had the Heir’s tastes down to a science. The master liked wearing blue-green, liked practicing running script, liked admiring snow pressing down green bamboo, liked Shiziming tea, and liked four-color flaky velvet cakes.

With one lowered glance or raised eye from the Heir, I knew what he was thinking. He also found it increasingly convenient to order me about.