Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Wang Long’s illness had its ups and downs, and I hadn’t slept a single solid night through it. Day and night blurred together, light and dark spun upside down, until the dark circles under my eyes nearly hung down to the corners of my mouth.

Then, in a dazed haze, a roll of spring thunder jolted me awake.

I sat there blankly for a while before belatedly understanding.

Wiping away my tears in a hurry, I said in a trembling voice, “Master, spring has come!”

Wang Long, who had been dozing, woke with a start. His voice was hoarse as he said, “Quick, open the window!”

At that moment, spring thunder rumbled overhead and lightning flashed and roared.

No one knew how much time passed, but the long-awaited rain still hadn’t fallen.

I opened the small window in front of me and saw a winding branch reaching into the room. On the buds that had yet to open, tiny flecks of green had already appeared.

I pointed that branch out to him as if I’d found some priceless treasure, but after staring outside for a long while, he said, “Help me sit up first.”

His gaze kept lingering on that shadow.

That’s right.

The long winter was over, yet that withered yellow leaf was still clinging firmly to the branch.

Not the slightest sign of falling.

The next day, Wang Long personally leaned on his cane and stood beneath that tree, staring at it for a long time.

“Something seems off…”

After thinking it over again and again, he called over a servant and told him to climb up and take a look at that strange leaf.

-Of course it wasn’t going to fall.

I’d long since welded it on with wire.

Spring breeze on my face, eyes bright as autumn water.

With Second Master looking after me, I only had to do laundry and wipe him down, so life was pretty easy.

One day I was in the kitchen yard, holding a stone mortar and grinding Sichuan pepper, when I ran into Yinjin from the Elder Branch. She watched me work while leaning against the doorframe and cracking melon seeds, then hummed in that half-smiling, half-sneering way of hers, “You’re pretty young, but your chest isn’t small.”

I knew she meant no harm, so I grinned and said, “Yeah. Unlike you, sis-you only grow older, not bigger in the chest.”

That instantly made her stand up straight in a huff.

“Hey! You little brat!”

Yinjin wasn’t the only one in the manor who had noticed the change in me. I was carrying a jar of pepper powder and passing under the corridor when I heard someone joking behind me.

“Haven’t seen you in half a year, and you’ve really filled out.”

I turned around and saw that it was none other than Wang Yu, the Heir Grandson of the Elder Branch.

He was looking me up and down, and I instinctively stepped back. Only then did he move his gaze away from my chest.

“Still just a little yellow-haired girl. Not much fun to tease.”

With that, still every inch the elegant young master, he handed me a bundle of tea leaves tied up with hemp rope.

“Take these. They’re for my Second Uncle’s health-preserving tonic.”

Wang Yu didn’t know that Second Master didn’t like health-preserving tonic.

Second Master only liked strong flavors.

The last time I made him lamb tail, I only sprinkled a little salt and pepper on it, and he secretly ate the whole pot.

After I took over the meals, Eldest Madam repeatedly told me to keep the food light, but I believed only what someone actually ate counted, so I would often secretly add a little numbing spice, then bloom some aromatics in the wok first.

Just like that, complete chaos.

Not even half a year had passed before Wang Long’s once-gaunt face had actually grown a little rounder.

He felt much more energetic for it, and he became even closer to me.

Of course, that sort of closeness wasn’t the way a man was close to a woman, but the way one man was close to his brother.

After all, he had never looked at me the way Wang Yu did-like muddy desire, and at the same time, intense interest.

Now that I was serving in the Second Branch, I was still dressed in a servant’s clothes, but anyone in the manor with eyes could tell at a glance that I was a woman. As for that story about me being a boy servant, I had no idea how much longer it would still work on Second Master!

When I returned to the side room, Wang Long had just woken up.

Summer was approaching, and his clothes had grown much lighter too. He was wearing only silk trousers below, sitting on the footboard and idly plucking at a pipa, his figure bright and luminous as jade.

When he saw me come in, he pointed at the crystal bowl on the table.

“I gave you the master’s milk pudding. Hurry up and eat it.”

The Marquis’s Estate was wealthy and extravagant. Just the annual tribute from the food households was more than enough for them to eat and drink through.

This milk pudding, made exclusively for the imperial household, was something even a bedchamber maid could get to before a palace lady.

Seeing me eat silently, a flash of amusement crossed Wang Long’s eyes. “Jing’er, are you happy?”

“Happy.”

“If you’re happy, then I’m happy,” he said, patting my head. “As long as the two of us are together every day, that would be a life like the immortals!”

Half a year had passed.

Wang Long seemed to have adapted very well to my identity as a servant boy, and he still hadn’t noticed the curves hidden beneath my men’s clothes.

Thinking of the strange flicker in Wang Yu’s eyes, I couldn’t help feeling uneasy.

I was just about to test Second Master’s attitude toward my being a girl when I saw him, wearing a robe, take something out of a hidden compartment.

“Jing’er, come here.”

Seeing how eagerly he held the tray out to me, I said in surprise, “Master, this silver…”

“It’s the private savings I’ve put aside.”

Wang Long stuffed the tray of silver into my arms and said earnestly, “When you leave the manor in the future, marry a wife. And if you have children someday, that’ll count as leaving me a line of descendants.”

I stared at him, completely dumbfounded. “B-but, Master, I’m a woman.”

At that, he lovingly stroked the top of my head.

“My dear, you’re talking nonsense again!”

I: “…”