Chen Yuli had finally managed to wrangle two days off at home, and had just gotten comfortable for an afternoon nap when her younger brother dug her out of bed.
“What is it?” She could barely get her eyes open.
Zhang Zaixin looked at her with complete seriousness: “Sister — am I ugly now?”
Chen Yuli: “……”
“What, did the young lady you fancy decide you were too plain for her?”
“I do not fancy her!” Zhang Zaixin said heatedly. “She is simply an ordinary classmate.”
“All right then,” Chen Yuli said cooperatively. “Has this ordinary classmate that you fancy decided you were too plain for her?”
Zhang Zaixin was so irritated he didn’t want to respond — but after a moment he turned back all the same, stubbornly unwilling to let it go: “She wouldn’t think me plain. I just — something seems to have changed, and I can’t tell what.”
“Has she stopped liking you?”
“She never——!”
“Then why are you anxious?”
“I’m not anxious!”
He sat, then stood, then sat again. Zhang Zaixin said in frustration: “You and Aunt Han Xiao are both useless. I’m going to find Father and Mother.”
Chen Baoxiang was busy trying to soothe her great immortal.
“How can you not be angry?!” Zhang Zhixu fumed.
“But it’s not your fault — how could I be angry? …… All right, all right, I’ll make sure to be angry next time.” She sighed.
“What on earth is happening?” Zhang Zaixin was bewildered.
Zhang Zhixu turned and lodged his complaint: “Your mother walked in on me alone in a room with another woman, and she’s not even upset. She doesn’t care about me anymore!”
Chen Baoxiang pressed a hand to her forehead and laughed: “Someone deliberately set up a trap, and I’d already seen through it entirely — what’s there to be angry about?”
“What if I had genuinely taken a liking to that young and beautiful girl?”
“Would you?”
“……No, but you should still be worrying and fretting about it.” Zhang Zhixu was a little cross. “Last year, on the twenty-second day of the third month, you were standing beside the young Gu gentleman, and I was in a sour mood about it for six solid months.”
“So that’s what all the cold comments were about,” Chen Baoxiang said, enlightened. “Why didn’t you just say so? Do you really think I could fall for someone like him?”
“Whether you could or couldn’t — you should still be standing only next to me.”
“But it was a funeral procession……”
Zhang Zhixu gave her a look.
Chen Baoxiang raised both hands in surrender: “Fine, I was wrong. From now on, the spot beside me is yours alone.”
Zhang Zaixin: “……”
Weren’t these two both past forty? Why were they still carrying on like a pair of children?
“Oh, that’s right — Zaixin, was there something you wanted?” Chen Baoxiang asked.
Zhang Zaixin pressed his lips together, deliberated for a long moment, and finally said: “I’d like to invite a friend over.”
“You have a friend?” Chen Baoxiang was astonished.
“You want to host guests?” Zhang Zhixu was astonished.
Of the two children they had raised, the younger was by far the more troublesome — reclusive and cold-mannered, with a tongue that drove people away, so that apart from the Zhao and Yin families, no one else’s children ever came willingly to visit. And ever since the birthday banquet where none of his classmates had come, Zhang Zaixin had taken a deep aversion to hosting gatherings. This was the first time in six years he had brought it up again.
Two pairs of eyes fixed on him unblinkingly. Zhang Zaixin, caught between embarrassment and irritation, said: “Even if I have no friends, don’t the two of you have plenty? Just invite all of yours.”
The two of them exchanged a look, and Chen Baoxiang asked: “And what occasion shall we use as a pretext?”
“……Say that we’ve recently received some tribute sweets from foreign lands, and we’re inviting guests to enjoy the flowers and sample the sweets.”
Chen Baoxiang’s eyebrow arched, and she gave a long, knowing “oh~”: “So we’ll invite the Zhao family, the Yin family, the Ye family — and perhaps the Meng family as well?”
Zhang Zaixin nodded: “That would work.”
“Ah, but the Meng family — we’re not particularly close to them. And I’ve heard they’re in the middle of arranging a marriage for their daughter, so it may not be convenient for them to come over.”
The composure Zhang Zaixin had been holding carefully in place flickered: “The Meng family — marrying off a daughter?”
“Indeed. She’s seventeen or eighteen now — it’s only natural they’d start making arrangements.”
“No. Have them bring their daughter to our manor first.”
“That’s quite the high-handed command, young master,” Zhang Zhixu said, amused. “Dictating someone else’s marriage arrangements?”
Zhang Zaixin was growing urgent now — but he couldn’t find the words. His face had gone red.
Chen Baoxiang gave a theatrical sigh: “Your sister bet on three months, and I told her that was far too generous. I give it a matter of days. You honestly — I don’t know who you picked up this habit from, always unable to say what you actually mean.”
Zhang Zhixu waved his hands: “Don’t look at me — I never taught him that.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s send an invitation for the young master and leave the rest to them,” Chen Baoxiang said.
Zhang Zaixin exhaled, relieved — and then immediately had a new thing to be anxious about.
Would Meng Tujin come?
·
The Meng household did indeed have thoughts of marrying off a daughter — but not Meng Tujin. It was the second daughter, born of the second wife.
When the invitation from the Marquess Manor arrived, the whole family was overjoyed, seeing it as an extraordinary opportunity, and cheerfully dressed up the second daughter and set off.
Tujin watched from a corner, her envy quiet and soft.
How wonderful it would be, she thought, if Father loved and protected me like that too.
The lively procession of carriages disappeared into the distance. She went back to her little courtyard and sat down in silence, opening her book.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when a commotion suddenly broke out outside.
Back so soon?
Tujin frowned faintly, set her book down, and went to look.
A crowd of people had appeared at the mouth of the narrow lane. The warm glow of lanterns spilled out from an ornate carriage, falling across the Meng family’s gate.
Tujin scrambled back in alarm — but before she could retreat, a hand came down firmly on her shoulder.
“Running away again?” Zhang Zaixin was breathing hard, his eyes red at the corners. “Do you absolutely have to avoid me?”
Tujin stared at him, struck speechless.
“Even someone condemned to execution gets a chance to speak in their defense before the verdict is carried out. Yet you’ve already passed sentence on me without asking a single question.” He said this with growing exasperation, then grabbed her hand and started pulling. “Come with me.”
“Don’t——” Tujin was flustered. “I still have to read.”
“How are you reading in the dark? Come to the Manor — you can read as much as you like there.”
Before she could respond, she had been lifted and placed inside the carriage. She sat there, dazed.
Across from her, he had turned his head away, jaw tight — working out his temper at something she couldn’t identify, his throat bobbing. Even in profile, his expression was rigid.
She’d already stopped hovering around him so as not to cause him trouble with rumors — and yet here he was, looking no more pleased with her than before.
Tujin shook her head.
If she had a mother as wonderful and warm as Lady Chen to look after her, she thought, she would wake up happy every single day.
·
Tujin had imagined the banquet would be the kind where everyone mingled freely — in which case arriving late wouldn’t matter much, so long as she kept close to the walls and didn’t draw attention.
She stepped through the door and found every pair of eyes in the room turning toward her.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
“Found her at last?” Chen Baoxiang was seated at the head of the table, her smile easy and warm. “I was just saying — a living person can’t simply vanish without a trace. Isn’t that right, Master Meng?”
Meng Tujin’s father, seated nearby, had gone slightly pale: “Yes… this girl, truly, one doesn’t know where she wanders off to — not even a word to let the family know. Very worrying.”
“Now that everyone is here, let’s begin.” Chen Baoxiang gestured for the meal to start.
The kitchens stirred into motion, and course after course began to appear on the table. The other guests turned back to their own conversations, the buzz of voices filling the room once more.
Tujin was guided to a seat beside Chen Baoxiang.
She sat there in a daze as dish after dish was placed in her bowl; she sat there in a daze as the gentleman beside Chen Baoxiang asked after her with warm, genuine concern. She felt like a traveler who had been stumbling through a blizzard and suddenly stepped into a warm, lantern-lit cabin — flooded with something wonderful, and utterly at a loss for what to do with it.