The words, somewhere between true and false, fell onto the field path and stirred not a trace of alarm.

Shen Zhuxi looked up at him, half puzzled, half reproachful, and said: “You would not.”

“Why not?” Li Que asked.

“Li Wu trusts you.”

“Big brother trusts me, so you trust me unconditionally as well?”

“It is not quite the same.” Shen Zhuxi paused, then said with sincerity: “Li Wu trusts you, and I trust Li Wu’s judgment.”

The distinction she was drawing might have left another person completely baffled, but Li Que understood her meaning at once.

“That was before. But things are different now,” Li Que said. “You know my secret.”

Shen Zhuxi looked at him in surprise. “What secret do I know?”

Li Que: “…”

After a moment, Shen Zhuxi came back to herself, and recalled what she had overheard in the entertainment quarter.

She frowned, confused. “Is it something very few people know?”

“Many people know it.”

“Then what reason do you have to kill me?” Shen Zhuxi asked.

Li Que was briefly silent. He thought to himself: Big brother, you always say sister-in-law is a simpleton — she is not simple at all.

“What Madam Cui said is true. I did work as a porter,” Li Que said. “Does being around me not make you feel unbearable?”

Shen Zhuxi shook her head and said: “If there had been any other choice, no one would have wanted to go to such a place.”

“I have killed someone. That is also true,” said Li Que, meeting her eyes. “Are you not afraid?”

She hesitated a moment, then said: “A little.”

“How did I not see it?”

“Because I trust—” Shen Zhuxi met his gaze, her clear almond-shaped eyes steady and sincere. “You would not kill without cause. If you took a life, it must have been for a reason that, to you, left no other choice.”

“…”

Li Que’s throat worked. By the time he realized his lips had parted without his noticing, he had already forgotten what he had meant to say. He pressed his lips together and, without warning, turned and walked ahead with long strides.

“Wait for me!” Shen Zhuxi gathered her skirt and ran to catch up.

“Sister-in-law,” Li Que said suddenly, “you are not simple at all.”

Shen Zhuxi muttered: “I never was.”

It was all because of that insufferable Li Wu, forever saying unflattering things about her in front of his brothers!

“Do you see the scar on my face?” Li Que’s left hand — the one unburdened by anything — rose gently to touch the side of his face where the entire cheek was missing. “What do you think happened to it?”

Shen Zhuxi looked at the hollow on his cheek, hesitated a moment, and said: “…Gouged out by someone?”

“Cut off,” said Li Que. “By iron scissors. Cut off, just like that.”

He stared straight ahead, his expression without the slightest ripple, only his clear and delicate eyes cold as ice.

“By the woman I killed.”

In Shen Zhuxi’s eyes, the disfigurement on Li Que’s face changed in character. This mark — once frightening to her, then grown familiar, even occasionally endearing in the way a birthmark might be — seemed to transform, to take on the raw appearance of something freshly ravaged, as if the scissors had only just done their work moments ago.

“I was born in a brothel. My mother was the daughter of a condemned official, cast into the pleasure quarters. After my mother died, the madam drove me out of the establishment. I drifted about for some time, and when I was ten years old, I came to Yutou County,” Li Que said, calmly and without inflection. “I had nowhere to go, and I entered that world again. Madam Cui put me to work as a porter — doing everything I had been familiar with from before — nothing more than bringing tea and water to the women who were tired after long days, carrying wash water for their baths. The women who lived in such places had very different temperaments, but on the whole, life was bearable enough. Until…”

“Until I gradually grew older, my face filled out, and I began to be noticed by the patrons who frequented the establishment,” Li Que paused briefly, then went on. “There was a woman in the house called Yingying, at the height of her popularity. She came upon her favored patron pawing at me after he had drunk too much. Once that man left, she called me to her room and humiliated me, struck me, pricked me with needles…”

Shen Zhuxi listened with her heart in her throat, unable to keep from knitting her brows, her face filled with anxious distress. And yet Li Que, the very person at the center of it all, remained just as expressionless as before.

“No matter how I begged her, she would not stop. In the end… I was on the floor, and she picked up the scissors from the embroidery frame…”

Shen Zhuxi could not bring herself to hear the rest, yet Li Que spoke the final words through to the end, his voice unchanged in tone throughout.

“She cut away my flesh,” he said. “I was twelve years old.”

“She did that to you, and no one stopped her?!” Shen Zhuxi’s voice shook with fury.

“Sister-in-law, not every place has justice. And not everyone is like you — willing to come forward and stand up for it,” said Li Que. “She was the establishment’s prize earner. When she was tormenting me, the sound of my screaming could be heard throughout all of Chunfeng Yuan… and not a single person ever stepped in.”

“A year later, she died in her bed with a full hundred knife wounds on her body, blood soaking through the mattress.” He said. “It was me.”

“…”

“She cut away one piece of my flesh. I returned a hundred cuts — a hundredfold repayment. After that, we were even.”

“And then?” Shen Zhuxi could not stop herself from asking.

“Madam Cui was going to have me arrested and taken to the authorities. Big brother was the one who saved me. He gave Madam Cui three hundred taels of silver and bought my life with it. I asked him why he had saved me, and he said—” Li Que stared ahead, his eyes taking on a distant, unfocused quality, as though reaching toward something far in the past. “He said that in my eyes he could see a recklessness that had no regard for life — like what he had once been. He told me: since you do not care about living, sell that life of yours to me.”

Shen Zhuxi looked at Li Que, who was only a few years older than her at most, and wanted to say something comforting yet could find no words.

Beside the weight of Li Que’s past, her light, airy words of consolation would have been too insubstantial to count for anything.

Li Que turned his head and, seeing the heaviness on her face, laughed despite himself. “Sister-in-law, I am not even sad about it — how are your eyes already going red?”

Shen Zhuxi quickly turned her head away. “They are not — the wind blew something into my eyes!”

“Sister-in-law…” Li Que’s voice softened. “Thank you.”

“Thank me for what?”

“For becoming big brother’s wife. For my sister-in-law being you, and not anyone else.”

Li Que’s frank words sent color rushing to Shen Zhuxi’s cheeks, and shame surged up from within her. If Li Que knew that she and Li Wu were only married in name, what would he think?

“Let us go, sister-in-law.” Li Que swept away the shadow that had hung over him and smiled, and it was the same smile as before — the same as always. “Maybe by the time we get back, big brother will already be home.”

Shen Zhuxi followed his lead in changing the subject, and was just about to say something else unrelated when an oxcart happened to rumble past them from the side.

The old man sitting on the cart, dressed in plain worn cloth, gently pulled the reins and asked Li Que for directions to a nearby house, his manner tentative and deferential.

Shen Zhuxi had only been half listening at first, intending just to overhear in passing, but no matter how she had expected it to go, she could never have imagined that after all the old man’s meandering description, the place he was asking directions to turned out to be Zhou Family’s small courtyard.

“Elder, what is your business there? Have you come to visit relatives?” Shen Zhuxi could not help but ask.

The old man chuckled with a contented, satisfied air. “I bought that courtyard and am moving in today!”

“You bought it?” Shen Zhuxi said in shock. “But…”

Zhou Family’s courtyard was sold — by whom? Did Zhou Sao know about it? Did Zhou Zhuang’s father also agree?

“But what?” The old man looked puzzled.

“But what a coincidence it is.” Before Shen Zhuxi could speak, Li Que’s smiling voice came first. He clasped his hands toward the old man in a polite bow. “This is my sister-in-law, and she and my big brother live in the very courtyard right next door to yours. We shall be neighbors from now on — we must all look out for one another.”

“What a fortunate coincidence!” The old man said with surprised delight. “My wife and I are strangers here and know no one — we will need to rely heavily on your help. Once we have settled in, I will bring my family to pay you a visit and hope you will not think us too forward!”

The women and children seated behind him on the cart looked down at Shen Zhuxi and Li Que with expressions ranging from curious to timid.

“You are too kind, elder. Neighbors ought to be neighborly,” Li Que said with a smile. “You have made an excellent purchase in that courtyard — the previous owners kept it with great care. The furniture is all there, and everything is spotlessly clean. I imagine you paid a fine price for it?”

“Not much at all!” The old man waved his hands repeatedly, his coarse and weatherworn face breaking into an open, honest smile. “The family was in a hurry to sell, so the price was low, and it came with eighteen piglets to boot — counting the piglets, the whole thing was a real bargain!”

Li Que laughed. “Then you have truly struck a lucky find, elder. Most people would never have such an opportunity.”

“It is true — spent a whole life of toil, and at last we have a place to call our own,” the old man said with a sigh of deep feeling.

Li Que exchanged a few more pleasantries, and the oxcart set off again.

“A new neighbor is not a bad thing — it means big brother will worry less when sister-in-law is home alone,” said Li Que.

“But… if Zhou Sao comes back…” Shen Zhuxi said with a worried frown.

“Zhou Sao has a husband and sons — two of them — so sister-in-law need not trouble herself over her. People always end up living their own lives in the end,” Li Que said. “Besides, it has been this long already, and Zhou Sao has not come back. Maybe she has made her peace with it and decided to stay at her parents’ home after all.”

“…I hope so.”

The two of them made their way back to the Li Family’s courtyard. Shen Zhuxi had barely pushed the gate open when Li Wu’s full, commanding voice rang out from the inner room.

“Get away from me! Shen Zhuxi is back — Shen Zhuxi! Shen Zhuxi — get over here, quick!”

A surge of joy rose in Shen Zhuxi’s heart unbidden. She forgot to take him to task for calling her in that impolite manner and stepped briskly into the inner room.

“Li Wu…”

Before the words were fully out, the sight of Li Wu lying face-down on the bed gave her a fright.

Li Wu was bare from the waist up, and at the position of his right shoulder blade was a cut four to five inches long. Li Kun stood beside the bed at a complete loss, a strip of white bandaging in hand, a freshly removed old bandage at his feet — stained not only with the color of medicinal ointment, but also with mottled traces of red.

“Shen Zhuxi, he is all thumbs — you come and change the dressing!” Li Wu said with undisguised irritation.

“What happened to you?!”

Shen Zhuxi came back to her senses and forced her unsteady legs to carry her to Li Wu’s side. She looked at the terrible wound on his back, and even her voice began to tremble.

“What happened to you…”

“Do not cry. Do not cry. I told you not to cry—” Li Wu looked thoroughly exasperated. He gritted his teeth and said, “If you cry, I will drop dead on the spot!”

Shen Zhuxi drew a sharp breath and bit down on her lip, pushing back the tears that threatened to fall.

“Give her the medicine and bandages, then get out,” Li Wu commanded.

Li Kun obediently handed the bandaging over to Shen Zhuxi and pointed out the open jar sitting at the head of the bed: “Medicine… apply it…”

After Li Kun left, Shen Zhuxi’s legs gave out and she sank onto the edge of the bed.

She looked at the wound on Li Wu’s shoulder blade and fought with every bit of her will to keep the tears welling up inside her from spilling over.

“How did this happen?” she asked.

“Got careless for a moment while handling something — it is nothing, just a small wound,” Li Wu said from where he lay. “I brought you some Xiazhi tea… the kind you said you used to drink often in the palace. I left it on the table in the main room — did you see it?”

Better if he had said nothing — with those words, the tears Shen Zhuxi had been holding back could no longer be contained.

“How could you be so foolish!”

Unable to stop herself, she gave him a light tap on the waist. Her heart was full of anger, yet the force she put behind it was less than a tenth of what she could have managed.

Shen Zhuxi scrubbed hard at the tears spilling from her eyes and said in a voice thick with the threat of crying: “I never asked you to go buy Xiazhi tea — why would you travel so far for it! And now you have hurt yourself in the process — was it worth it, for a packet of tea?”

“Who said I went to Shangzhou specifically to buy tea — Shen Zhuxi, do you really think you are that important?” Li Wu raised his voice. “I went to Shangzhou to handle business. I happened to pass a tea shop and picked up a packet for you on the way! And you should have seen your own face when you talked about Xiazhi tea — did you really need to say anything? Take a look at that radiant expression of yours.”

“But I… it was not as though I had to have it!”

“I went all the way there and bought it — do you dare not drink it?” Li Wu turned his head and fixed her with a glare that was all ferocity, like some cruel and fearsome tyrant. “You had better chew every last leaf until there is nothing left!”

His manner was terrible, every word harsh and hostile, the very picture of a ruthless, overbearing bully.

And yet Shen Zhuxi could not feel even a trace of fear.

He was good to Li Kun. He was good to Li Que. After their marriage in name, he had been good to her as well. No one had ever treated her with this kind of goodness before.

A goodness so profound she did not know how to repay it. A goodness so profound it was beginning to leave her at a loss.

“Shen Zhuxi! Stop crying! Your tears are dripping into my wound — are you trying to kill me so you can remarry?!”

Li Wu’s clamoring protests broke through Shen Zhuxi’s melancholy thoughts.

“I know, I know — stop thrashing around or the wound really will split open!” Shen Zhuxi gave him a pretend-angry pat on the back.

She sniffled, then set about applying the medicine with careful, focused hands.

For some reason, Li Que’s words came drifting back to her.

“Li Wu…” Shen Zhuxi said before she could stop herself. “Thank you.”

“Thank me for what?” Li Wu twisted his head around, eyebrows raised, wearing that expression of careless, maddening cheek.

“Thank you…” Shen Zhuxi said, “for being the one who rescued me from the bookshelf.”