Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The servant stared at me in shock.

I shut the doors and refused all visitors.

When I was finally alone, the tears came.

Cui Zhaoyu!

May you meet petty villains every time you leave the house. May your horse kick you the moment you dismount. May every time you open your mouth begin with a mouthful of dust.

I hated him.

But I could not bring myself to curse him too cruelly.

He had not committed a crime worthy of death. More importantly, I truly had loved him.

After crying until I had nothing left, I wiped my eyes and spoke quietly to myself.

It is all right.

Li Yunshu.

When you want something, you go and get it.

You do not wait.

What would be the point of waiting and waiting, only to get back a man who had spoiled rotten?

Would I wait through summer and autumn, only for my heart to freeze by winter?

Better to sever things now. The summer sun could drive out the cold inside me. Autumn’s harvest could fill the hollow place in my heart. By winter, I would be healed and ready to look forward to first snow and frost again.

I told Father I wanted to end the engagement.

He was startled. “Why?”

A vindictive impulse rose in me.

“He made me wait,” I said coldly.

Father fell silent.

After a long while, he said, “Very well. Then the engagement ends.”

He wrangled with the Cui family and returned every item of the betrothal gifts, one by one.

It was an exhausting affair.

I slept too much during the day and could not sleep that night, so I walked through the courtyard. From Father’s rooms came the sound of muffled sobbing.

“Ah-Hao, I am sorry,” he said. “I should never have made you wait.”

Ah-Hao had been my mother’s name.

They, too, had once loved each other.

Yet death had divided them, and only when he looked back did Father realize that, apart from eating and sleeping beneath the same roof, they had rarely done anything delightful together.

Whenever she was in the mood for something, he had another matter he considered more important or more interesting.

Everything mattered more than she did. Anything was reason enough to put her last.

By the time he finally had leisure, by the time he had finished all those interesting things and was ready to humor her, she was gone and her heart had gone cold.

Some people and some moments never returned once lost.

The boldness of youth did not come twice.

A young woman’s tender dreams bloomed only briefly.

They had both become dull people in each other’s eyes, lived out a dull life, and ended it with an imperfect full stop.

It was miserable.

I refused to become like them.

After listening to Father cry, I slept soundly.

I knew I had done the right thing.