The sun climbed to its highest point in the sky, and still not a single person had stopped at Shen Zhuxi’s letter-writing stall.

She hadn’t eaten at noon, and her stomach was sending out intermittent rumbles. She cast longing glances at the wonton stall beside her, with its drifting fragrance of green onion, but she had not a coin to her name to go and inquire about prices.

A woman walked past carrying a basket overflowing with stuffed sesame flatbreads. Shen Zhuxi recognized the scent as the confectionery stall she had passed earlier. She couldn’t help staring at the flatbreads in the basket — she wanted them with every fiber of her being, but buying on credit was something she could never bring herself to do.

If only Li Wu were here. She still had over four hundred taels stored with him.

Thinking of Li Wu, she grew a little annoyed: was he really not doing something underhanded? If he wasn’t, then why did passersby hurry away after catching a glimpse of him standing behind her? But if he was — why did her stall remain empty even after he left?

Shen Zhuxi suspected the placard itself might be the problem. She picked up her brush and wrote “Letter-Writing Services” once in running script and once in standard script, and found a way to hang both sheets of rice paper over the placard, half covering the original text.

She looked at the original handwriting on the placard with disdain, and thought it only reasonable that no one had come.

“Little miss, it’s not hung properly — the wind will blow it away!” called the wonton stall owner, who had been watching her efforts.

“Is there a way to make it stick?” Shen Zhuxi asked humbly.

“Easy!”

The owner stepped back to his stove, scraped a bit of rice paste from the edge of the iron pan, dipped his finger in, and walked over to Shen Zhuxi. He stood before the placard, removed the sheets she had barely managed to hang, and dabbed rice paste with his fingertip onto each of the four corners of the paper’s back.

“There you go,” he said.

He pressed the paste-backed paper flat against the placard, and the sheet settled neatly over the original text without a crease.

“Rice paste can be used like that?” Shen Zhuxi was amazed.

The owner grinned. “You didn’t know?”

“I’m too ignorant of practical things,” Shen Zhuxi said, a little ashamed.

The owner said offhandedly, “Nothing to be ashamed of. That sort of simple, money-saving trick — only poor folk know it.”

Shen Zhuxi didn’t know how to respond to that. She laughed awkwardly and changed the subject. “I arrived late today and couldn’t find a spot for my stall, so Li Wu had to displace your table and stools — I’m truly sorry. Please don’t hold it against him…”

“What’s there to hold against him.” The owner laughed heartily. “Every merchant in this town has been put out by Li Wu at least once. He puts us out; we put him out. That’s how it goes.”

“People put Li Wu out?” Shen Zhuxi asked, puzzled.

“That’s something Li Wu would have to tell you himself.” The owner smiled. “I hear you were pulled out of the river by Li Wu?”

“How did you know?”

“Small town — any little thing spreads in no time. Especially with someone as… striking as yourself.” The owner said in a teasing tone. “Li Wu has rescued women before, but you’re the first one who stayed.”

Shen Zhuxi said, embarrassed, “I had nowhere else to go, so he took me in. And I intend to earn my own money — I won’t let him spend anything on my account.”

The owner shook his head and smiled. “If you knew him better, you wouldn’t say that.”

Shen Zhuxi didn’t want to keep talking about Li Wu. An unmarried girl being tangled up with a man’s name always felt uncomfortable.

“Owner, why hasn’t anyone come in for a midday meal… lunch yet, even though it’s noon?”

“One look at you and I can tell you’re a girl from a wealthy family who’s never known hardship.”

The owner didn’t seem put out. He picked up the cloth hanging by the stove and wiped off the edge of the pot, then set it back down and looked at Shen Zhuxi again.

“Aside from wealthy families, who can afford three meals a day? We country folk eat twice — something in the morning, something in the evening. That’s already a good life. Some who are too poor to even light a stove are perfectly content with a bowl of wild vegetable gruel once a day.”

What the owner described was, to Shen Zhuxi, a world she had never imagined. It had never occurred to her that there were people in the world who did not eat three meals a day.

“But… eating only twice, don’t you get hungry?” Shen Zhuxi couldn’t help asking.

“What can you do about being hungry? Go hungry enough times and you get used to it. The beggars on the street are the truly hungry ones — at least we have something to eat. They really do go to bed with their stomachs empty every night. That’s something Li Wu knows all about…”

The owner seemed to realize he’d brought up Li Wu, and Shen Zhuxi had just begun to wonder why — when he stopped himself.

“…Anyway. Country people are rough-hewn. Different from delicate young ladies like yourself.” The owner let his curious gaze sweep over her and said, “Did Li Wu not tell you that you won’t be able to attract customers?”

Shen Zhuxi asked, puzzled, “Why do you say that too?”

“The people who need letters written can’t read. In this county, aside from a few young gentlemen and the occasional struggling scholar, who knows their characters? If you wrote a jumble of nonsense, they’d never know.”

“But I really can write!” Shen Zhuxi was distressed. She looked toward the freshly updated placard, her voice rising with urgency. “I know running script, standard script, and I even know a little slender-gold script and cursive…”

The owner cut her off. “You still don’t understand.”

Shen Zhuxi looked at him blankly.

“What style of calligraphy you know doesn’t matter — I can’t tell the difference, and neither can anyone else in this county.” The owner’s gaze held a trace of sympathy. “You’re a woman. Who would believe that a woman can write better than a scholar? So in Yutou County, you simply won’t be able to get any customers.”

A reality she had never considered struck Shen Zhuxi like a blow.

Not because her calligraphy was poor. Not because her prices were too high. Simply because she was a woman?

She stood motionless, saying faintly, as if to herself, “But I really can write…”

The owner shook his head, turned, and went back to his stove. The last look he gave her before turning away lingered in her vision: it was pity —

She, who had once stood high above all and would never have deigned to notice such a person, was now being pitied by a commoner.

The double blow left Shen Zhuxi in a daze. She forced herself to sit back down at her stall, outwardly appearing to wait for customers who would not come, while inwardly she turned over all that had befallen her since leaving the palace.

She had always been considered learned and accomplished within the palace walls. Why was it that the moment she stepped into the common world, she seemed to know nothing and be capable of nothing?

She hadn’t known about dried dung bricks. She hadn’t known real prices. She hadn’t even known that rice paste could be used as glue. And because the women of the common world were not believed to write as well as scholars, her own calligraphy — however fine — was presumed to be no better than a scholar’s either.

No matter how beautifully she rendered her sign, no one would come to her for a letter.

Shen Zhuxi blinked hard, forcing the sting back from her eyes. She couldn’t cry — what good would crying do? She refused to believe that after the first customer came, anyone would still doubt whether she could write.

She kept waiting.

But by the time the golden light of sunset had spread across the street, not a single customer had arrived.

The wonton stall had already begun closing up, the owner tidying away his pots and equipment with practiced ease. The traveling peddlers nearby were also pulling up their carrying poles and leaving. One by one, the storefronts along the street drew their shutters closed.

Fewer and fewer people walked the street. Even the curious stares had grown sparse.

Just as Shen Zhuxi was sinking into despondency, a plain-looking middle-aged man in ordinary cloth clothes walked over. He looked at her face, his voice carrying a touch of doubt: “How much do you charge for a letter home?”

Shen Zhuxi perked up at once. “One copper—”

She caught the change in the man’s expression and immediately revised: “Nothing at all!”

The man asked again, “What exactly is the price?”

Shen Zhuxi thought of the wonton stall prices next to her, added a small amount to that, and said, “Twenty copper coins will be plenty!”

“What does a woman know about writing?” A flicker of contempt crossed the man’s eyes. “Five coins. That’s what I’ll pay, just to give it a try.”

Shen Zhuxi hesitated, but a full day of being utterly ignored had severely shaken her confidence. After a moment’s wavering, she gritted her teeth and agreed.

“Fine. Here’s what you write—” The man began. “Second Brother, Mother wants to know if you’ll be coming home for the Spring Festival this year. If you can, we’d all be so happy. If it turns out the same as past years and you can’t make it, remember to take care of yourself. Mother and I worry about you. There’s word that the capital is in turmoil — you must be very careful there. If the imperial examinations are cancelled, come home right away. Your sister-in-law recently gave birth — it’s a boy…”

The man rambled on in a stream of disconnected family talk. Shen Zhuxi wrote while polishing his words, and for the first time found herself slightly flustered trying to keep up.

After a full two pages, the man finally finished dictating.

He looked at the two sheets of fresh letter paper on the table with suspicion. “Did you get everything I said?”

“Every word. If you don’t believe me, you may have someone who can read come and check.”

“…This will do,” the man said, though his face remained thick with distrust.

Shen Zhuxi felt a little deflated. Her flowing, effortless running script had done nothing to earn her even a grain of trust.

“What should I put for the signature?”

“Wang Er’niu.” Shen Zhuxi wrote at the letter’s close: your elder brother Wang Er’niu. Then asked, “What is your second brother’s name?”

“Wang Sanniu.”

She wrote on the blank envelope: to be respectfully received by my younger brother Wang Sanniu, folded everything, and handed it to the waiting man.

The man turned it over in his hands a couple of times, said nothing, reached into his sleeve, counted out a string of copper coins, and dropped five of them onto the table before turning to leave.

The process had been a bumpy one, but she had finally opened for business. Gazing at those five hard-earned copper coins on the table, Shen Zhuxi felt a joy she could not quite put into words.

It was entirely different from the joy of receiving a rare and precious gift from her imperial father. That had been a joy like clouds — light, floating, translucent. This joy cut straight to the heart, blooming in the deepest part of her chest, accompanied by an excited drumbeat, leaving her feeling dizzy and bright all at once.

“By closing time at the latest, someone will come to you for a letter.”

Li Que’s words suddenly rang in her ears.

Li Wu and the wonton stall owner had both been so certain she wouldn’t get any customers. Why had Li Que been so sure she would? And with such precision — he’d said by closing time at the latest, and sure enough, just as closing time arrived, her first customer had appeared.

Had he seen something in her? Shen Zhuxi was puzzled.

She had her first transaction. She’d won the bet. There was no reason to sit here waiting any longer. Shen Zhuxi quickly asked the wonton stall owner to watch her stall for a moment, and took off without looking back after the man who had now walked some distance away.

She trailed at a careful distance behind him, and had just turned the corner at the end of the street when a familiar figure appeared beside the man. Shen Zhuxi flinched as if she’d been burned, and instinctively pressed herself back against the wall.

Why was it Li Wu?

Shen Zhuxi’s heart was hammering, and an uneasy premonition crept up through her.

She eased one eye around the corner and strained to overhear the conversation between the two men not far away.

“The letter’s written, same as we agreed — so does that mean…”

Li Wu pulled a string of copper coins from his pocket and tossed it to the man. Shen Zhuxi couldn’t make out the exact count from here, but it was clearly many times more than five coins. The man caught it, thanked him with delight.

“And this letter…” the man ventured.

“Take it and get out of here.”

The man answered with a hearty yes, and pocketed the letter with great satisfaction.

Everything was clear now. This hadn’t been a customer she had attracted — it was Li Wu who had arranged it.

The man pocketed the letter and turned to leave. Shen Zhuxi couldn’t dodge in time, and their eyes met. The man stopped dead in fright. “You…”

Behind the man, Li Wu raised his eyes. Shen Zhuxi was certain that even if he hadn’t seen her yet, the next moment he would. Her mind hadn’t caught up, but her body was already fleeing.

“Shen…”

Li Wu’s voice was left far behind her.