Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I stayed with the Cen family for another four years.

For those four years, I paid no mind to the shop.

I gave them no pleasant looks.

But I ate well, dressed well, used the best of everything-and charged it all to the Cen family’s accounts.

The finest brocades? If I wanted them, I took them.

The newest face powders? If I wanted them, I bought them.

I hired the best hairdresser to come to the manor every day and do my hair and makeup.

She praised the elegant grace between my brows and said I had an excellent bearing.

I thought she was forcing out compliments just to earn her money.

But when I looked at myself in the mirror, I still could not help but shed tears.

If Dalang could see me now, perhaps he would be happy. But if I saw him happy, I would certainly be unhappy.

What we had pursued from the very beginning had never been the same thing.

We were not people on the same road.

I simply had not known it when I was young.

I had held on to a chivalrous sort of righteousness, thinking I was saving someone from misery. In truth, that person did not need saving. It had only been my own conceit.

My younger sister was furious.

She called me a home-wrecker. She cursed me for dolling myself up every day after my man had died. She said if I did not want to stay with the Cen family, I should just go home and marry again.

Erlang (Second Master) told her to shut up. He said a widowed sister-in-law had it hard, and told my sister to be more understanding. If she could not, then she could go home and remarry instead.

They quarreled again and again. Later, they fought again and again.

But I did not think I had gone too far.

When they squandered the family business Dalang and I had built, they had felt no pain.

So when I spent their money, I felt no pain either.

Back then, if they had been sensible, Dalang and I could have lived a good life on our own.

They were the ones who had destroyed everything by force.

There was no reason they should be allowed to say when it began and when it ended.

Who did they think they were?

My heart was hard as iron, and I did not waver in the slightest.

Until my younger sister became pregnant.

This child had not come easily.

They had been married for eight years before they finally had a child.

My younger sister knelt before me, tears brimming in her eyes.

“Sister, I know I was wrong. Please let me go.”

“Elder Brother is gone, and Erlang (Second Master) has lost half his life too.”

“Father and Mother are old now. They are biased.”

“But Elder Brother was their own flesh and blood too. Just because they were biased, does that mean there was not even the slightest bit of sincerity?”

“It was so hard for me to finally have a child. I don’t want him to be born and think he is the child of sinners.”

“Sister, I was wrong. Please let me go.”

She knocked her head hard against the floor, over and over.

I stared out the door. I did not see my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, or Erlang (Second Master) rushing in to accuse me.

She lifted her head and saw my expression. Suddenly, she froze.

“You think I’m scheming against you?”

“Should I not think that?”

The things that happened in childhood were truly hard to forget.

If she cried, it was my fault.

If I did not give her my things, it was my fault.

If she broke something and shifted the blame onto me, it was my fault.

Even when she argued with her friends and lost, it was my fault.

Every single time, Father and Mother would come out and help her blame me.

I was already used to it.

I had never trusted her.

She rose to her feet as if her soul had left her body, then staggered toward the door. When she reached it, she turned back, her eyes full of tears as she looked at me with a kind of despair and estrangement.

“Sister, how did we sisters end up like this?”

I wanted to ask that too.

How did we end up like this?

Erlang (Second Master) hurried over. When he saw her coming out of my courtyard, he could not help but snap in a low voice,

“Why did you come bothering Sister-in-law again? Can you stop making trouble?”

My younger sister bristled at once.

“Why is it me making trouble? Why can’t it be her?”

“I know exactly what kind of person Sister-in-law is. You, on the other hand, can stir up trouble out of nothing. Back then, if you had not despised that bandit for being ugly, why would I have offended him? Why would all those things have happened afterward?”

My younger sister let out a sob and slapped Erlang (Second Master) hard across the face.

“You’re not human. He was the one staring at me, yet now you blame me. Sister blames me, Father and Mother blame me, all of you blame me. I might as well die.”

She ran off, sobbing.

This family no longer looked like a family.

At night, lamplight flickered in layers of shadow.

I was sewing a little child’s garment.

In truth, before I learned what Dalang had been thinking, he had treated me very well.

He said I was young, and that pregnancy would harm my body. He said we would wait a few more years before having children.

Before he left, we had agreed that once he returned, we would divide the household and have children.

But after he left, there was no afterward.

The affairs of the world are like frost. They warm a person’s heart, then chill it again.

Yet it is easy for a heart to grow cold. To make it warm again is difficult.

I took the little garment to my younger sister.

At the time, her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Before her sat a bowl of abortifacient medicine.

She was wavering, unsure whether she should drink it.

I poured the medicine away.

“I am leaving. After this, we will never see each other again.”

My younger sister was startled.

“Where are you going?”

I did not answer.

When I was young, I had envied and resented this younger sister of mine.

I had once cried by the well, looking at my own single-lidded eyes and flat nose reflected in the water, hating that we were both born of the same father and mother, yet our looks were so different.

But later, I stopped envying her so much.

First, because I grew used to it.

Second, because my friends never disliked me for my ordinary looks, nor did they like her just because she was beautiful. Instead, they would secretly whisper in my ear.

“Why does your younger sister have such a bad temper?”

“Why are your parents so biased?”

“Don’t be sad. You still have us.”

I thought this was probably what my teacher meant by losing at sunrise only to gain at sunset.

If the sun would not shine on me, the moon would.

If neither sun nor moon shone on me, there were still the white clouds, still the stars. And if nothing else, the dark clouds, wind, and rain would surely not despise me.

Now, I did not envy her at all.

She and I-one unbeautiful, one beautiful-neither of us had managed to live beautifully.

But I believe that in this life, a person should live beautifully. That is true beauty.