chapter 2
Xiao Yuan knew my temperament. She kept rubbing her hands together, waiting for a chance to charge into battle for me.
Not until the Shangsi Festival arrived and I chose to stay behind closed doors did she realize I truly had no intention of fighting for him.
In my last life, Mother had also chosen Shangsi for Shen Miaoyi’s meeting with the Young Prince.
She had locked me away, ordering me not to leave the house under any circumstances, especially not with this face of mine on display.
I had hated her favoritism.
Miserable and stifled, I dragged Xiao Yuan out to guess lantern riddles. I solved one after another.
My spirits revived. With an armful of lanterns, I staggered across Magpie Bridge.
A folding fan suddenly nudged aside the rabbit lantern before my face.
A pair of smiling eyes burst unexpectedly into view.
“You must be the Zhou family’s Second Miss.”
“Your parents asked me to come meet you. I have been watching you for quite some time, yet you never noticed me.”
Second Miss?
Apart from the older brother I had not seen in years, I was the Zhou family’s only second-born child.
After all, in outsiders’ eyes, however beloved another family’s daughter might be, how could she compare with one’s own flesh and blood?
So no one had ever thought of Shen Miaoyi as one of the Zhou daughters.
That night, I was overjoyed. I thought Mother was merely stern in speech but tender at heart, and that she had arranged for me to meet a suitable husband too.
Firework trees blazed while embroidered lanterns shone.
My heart pounded.
Only when Tang Su’s family came to exchange our birth charts did we discover the mistake.
Shen Miaoyi’s eyes reddened.
“If Sister Ningshu likes him, I can yield him to her. Why did she have to pretend to be me on purpose?”
My fists clenched.
The moment she shed a tear, everything became hers.
But once something was already in my hands, I had no intention of giving it away.
Tang Su spoke up for me as well.
“I happen to think Miss Ningshu is wonderful.”
Mother was furious.
She called me crude, unruly, and incorrigible, reciting all my faults. If the Young Prince were to take a wife, she said, he ought to marry someone gentle and graceful like Miaoyi.
Tang Su frowned slightly. Something stirred in his heart, but he said nothing.
Mother did not come to see me off on my wedding day.
Shen Miaoyi handled everything.
Her hair was arranged in a dignified style, a red velvet flower pinned at her temple.
“Sister Ningshu is so fortunate. You have peerless beauty, healthy parents, and now… a fine husband too.”
“If only my parents were still alive. Perhaps I might have been so fortunate as well.”
I was still angry and failed to notice the flicker of guilt in the eyes of the man beside me.
Tang Su and I shared a period of gentle happiness.
Pear blossoms drifted like fine snow, and someone still cared when my brows faintly furrowed.
It was all I had ever wanted in half a lifetime.
Sadly, it did not last.
After Shen Miaoyi chose another marriage, her life went badly. Her husband made reckless political remarks, and she was exiled with him to Bashu.
Before leaving, she made a point of sending Tang Su a letter.
Young Prince, I hope this letter finds you well.
Do not grieve for me. I am only grateful that I, rather than Sister Ningshu, married such a useless man.
I pray that she and Your Highness live in perfect harmony and never trouble yourselves on my account.
I only lament that, had my parents still been alive, perhaps I might have suffered fewer wrongs in this life.
The ink was blurred. Who knew how many times she had wept while writing it?
Bashu lay far away. They would never meet again in this lifetime.
Tang Su’s guilt deepened.
He began forbidding me from climbing trees to pick peaches for the servants. He despised my chatter and hated how loudly I laughed.
Even in bed, he would torment me with ruthless force.
“Your mother told me how vicious you have always been, how you bullied Miaoyi because she had no parents.”
“On Shangsi night, you deliberately used that face to seduce me. Why pretend to be so virtuous now?”
I held back my tears and bit the web of his hand.
“Mm. That doesn’t hurt.” He groaned under his breath and stroked my face.
“Zhou Ningshu, you already have everything. Why can you not learn to be a little more docile, like her?”
I smothered my voice, forcing a growl through clenched teeth.
“In. Your. Dreams!”
“Zhou Ningshu is Zhou Ningshu. I will never disguise myself in someone else’s nature!”
After that, Tang Su often had people look after Shen Miaoyi.
No matter how he humiliated me, I never spoke another word to him.
That deathly silence did not last long.
An epidemic swept across the south.
I did not escape it.
My older brother in distant Longxi sent someone with a single dose of antidote.
Mother intercepted it halfway and sent it to Shen Miaoyi instead.
Tang Su silently allowed it. He made no attempt to recover the medicine.
“We owe her that much,” he said.
My mind drifted in and out of fever.
Inwardly, I cursed eighteen generations of everyone’s ancestors.
Once I recovered, I swore I would…
But recovery never came.
On the day Tang Su learned that no medicine could save me, panic finally cracked his composure.
He stayed beside me without even changing his clothes.
Until I could no longer open my eyes.
His final whisper sounded beside my ear.
“Ningshu, I beg you. Don’t leave me alone.”
“Once you recover, we can go back to the way we were and ride side by side again…”
What had we been like back then?
Proud and imperious, I had made him promise me one thing.
“When Your Highness comes to propose, you must bring a branch of pear blossoms and swear that you will pluck flowers for me alone for the rest of your life.”
The young man had stood on Magpie Bridge and agreed with a smile.
Later, however, every letter he sent to Bashu carried a spray of Jiangnan pear blossoms.
A beautiful beginning and a wretched end–that was all our story amounted to.
As my consciousness scattered, one cold tear fell onto the center of my brow, slowly dissolving my thoughts.
When I came to, I was beside the koi pond in a side courtyard of the Shen residence.
I studied my reflection in the shimmering water and touched the new red beauty mark between my brows.
What rotten luck, I thought.
In this life, I would never again pin my hopes on another person.
This place held too much sorrow. I already knew where I would go, and I would set out the following night.