The moon bright, stars sparse, the night having already tolled past midnight. Lights scattered across Jiangning like the city’s own outline and skeleton; carriages rushed by, pedestrians carrying lanterns moved along the roads at varying paces, like blood coursing through veins. On the Qinhuai River, light rippled on the water, pleasure boats passing back and forth, their lanterns forming little boxes of light along the water’s path.
Those enjoying the nightlife had by now begun heading home; along the streets, among the grand estates and modest houses, occasional knocks on doors and warm greetings could be heard. Past midnight, the city’s lights gradually began to fade, thinning outward from the surroundings toward the city center like drifting duckweed. Some lanterns still burned in the brothels and teahouses, though with an increasingly forlorn air; pleasure boats gradually pulled ashore, their lights dimming one by one, leaving only scattered rooms still lit here and there.
As night wore on, mist began to stir in the darker corners. Hour after hour passed, and at the city’s quietest moment, in an unassuming stilt-house by a bend in the river on the city’s edge, warm golden light spilled out from a window.
It was a bedroom that looked, at the moment, somewhat cluttered. What had once been fairly simple furnishings now shared the room with a great many items clearly moved in recently—odd potted plants and flowers, several oddly shaped little cabinets, some amusing knotted ornaments hanging in strings from the bed, and a few unidentifiable bundles wrapped in cloth, some with nowhere left to go, propped on chairs, the dressing table piled high with rouge and powder. As the light came on, a woman’s voice drifted out.
“Mm, Sister Yunzhu, sleep a bit longer…”
The mosquito netting was half-drawn back, the soft, mumbling voice coming from within the wooden bed. Nie Yunzhu, dressed in an undergarment and silk trousers, reached to put on a thin outer robe; the woman on the inner side of the bed rolled over and curled toward her.
“There, there, go back to sleep…”
Yunzhu smiled, draped a robe over her shoulders, and got out of bed, slipping on a pair of cloth shoes patterned with small flowers, then carried the oil lamp and fire-striker over to the round table in the slightly more open part of the room. The small house had only the one guest room, which had eventually gone to Kou’er, while Yuan Jin’er, brandishing the banner of sisterly devotion, had shamelessly claimed to share a room with Nie Yunzhu.
Genuinely close as they were, sharing a room wasn’t really an issue. These past few days, though, Yuan Jin’er had somehow been steadily accumulating all sorts of odd little items from who-knew-where, filling up what had once been Nie Yunzhu’s simple, elegant bedroom bit by bit, until it had grown rather cluttered. Fortunately Nie Yunzhu wasn’t the sort of truly cold, aloof person who couldn’t tolerate someone else intruding on her space—Yuan Jin’er amused herself, and Yunzhu simply let her be.
“That Ning Yi… he wouldn’t dare show his face here today.” The woman on the bed rolled about lazily, her voice drowsy. “Isn’t he afraid I’ll scold him…”
Hearing her tone, Nie Yunzhu smiled faintly. Stepping outside, she found Hutao and Kou’er already awake, heating water in the kitchen, and went over to lend a hand. After washing her face, she returned to the room and sat at the dressing table for some light makeup and hair-styling, during which Yuan Jin’er on the bed mumbled a few more indistinct things. After a while, Yunzhu had finished dressing, changing into her formal outdoor attire—simple and understated as always, though ordinary as it looked, she’d actually put real effort into it each morning. She then went out to the steps outside the door to sweep for a while, and once finished, carried out a tray with teacup and pot and sat down on the steps.
The sky was still dark, though the moon could be seen in the night sky; far to the east, thick mountain mist showed a faint drifting outline. A breeze blew past, moaning softly over the Qinhuai River. Light fell on her from behind as she poured herself a cup of tea and settled in to wait quietly.
After a while, Yuan Jin’er emerged, rubbing her eyes, hair a mess. Her figure was slender and slight, with the supple, graceful build suited to dance, and not particularly short either, though at this moment she looked several years younger than her age. In the past, whenever Nie Yunzhu sat here waiting for Ning Yi, Jin’er would either still be asleep or exchange a few words before wandering off, but today she plopped herself down right beside Yunzhu, leaning against her and continuing to doze, apparently with no intention of leaving. Yunzhu wrapped an arm around her shoulders; the morning breeze tended to wake a person up, and before long Yuan Jin’er let out a long sigh, leaning over Yunzhu’s lap and reaching across to pour herself some tea.
“Mm, when he shows up I’m definitely going to give him a piece of my mind—so embarrassing!”
Yuan Jin’er declared this, and Yunzhu laughed beside her. “Still upset about it? What’s there to be upset over—the man already rewarded you five hundred taels. You did well.”
“But that’s not how it’s supposed to work! He scraped it together! Scraped together, and everyone’s going to know it—where am I supposed to put my face after that, I might as well not even show it in public anymore…”
“But he thought on his feet quickly enough—not that many people could have noticed.”
“As if! Plenty of people saw, it was so embarrassing right then…”
Recalling the night before, Yuan Jin’er felt an unbearable pang all over again. She’d gone up there, given him every bit of face she could, asked for a reward—and he’d only had four taels on hand. Fine, no money in the moment, was that so hard, he could’ve just written her a poem instead—but no, that Ning Yi had turned right around and told the girl behind him “five hundred taels,” not producing it himself, and a moment later had the Su family men scrape it together to hand over to the Swallow Jade Pavilion. At the very least, the Xue family crowd would surely have caught on, and plenty of onlookers would surely have noticed too…
First time she’d ever been this humiliated… no wait, second time—first was running out to scare him and getting scared by Liu Qingdi instead, and now this shameful business of him fishing out four measly taels to fob her off… and having it scraped together into five hundred was even more mortifying…
Ever since leaving the Swallow Jade Pavilion with Yunzhu the night before, she’d been grumbling and vowing revenge the whole way, and even now she kept muttering on about it, downing several cups of tea in the process. At last, as the eastern sky began to show its first pale glow, the morning breeze gradually thinning the mountain mist, that familiar figure with the bandaged left hand finally appeared not far off. His pace was the same as always; only as he drew near and stopped did he exchange a long look with Yuan Jin’er.
“You still dare to show up…”
“You still dare to talk!” Ning Yi arched an eyebrow. “Not enough chaos for you, huh?”
“What is there I don’t dare say—four measly taels of silver! Four taels!”
“What else could I do with only four taels on me—did you even discuss this with me beforehand? Serves you right for acting on your own!”
“I was covering for Sister Yunzhu! You not being properly prepared was your own problem!”
“Cover, you call that covering? Is that how you provide cover? By tonight the whole of Jiangning is going to be buzzing about this, you know that?!”
“If it’s buzzing, it’ll be buzzing about me too!”
“It wouldn’t be buzzing nearly this much if you hadn’t shown up at all—Yunzhu’s appearance alone would’ve had a limited effect, at most people getting a little curious. But you had to go and stir things up further, now it’ll never end… it’s just going to keep escalating into nonsense…”
“I helped you save face, out of consideration for Sister Yunzhu, and you call it stirring up nonsense? Plenty of people would beg for the chance to stir things up like that for you!”
“Oh, thank you, thank you so much for saving my face—did you even notice the look on that Liu Qingdi fellow’s face when you came up? He looked like he wanted to eat me alive. And after you and Yunzhu left, he kept fishing for information the whole time.”
“So what did you tell him?”
“I said I had no idea, never heard of any Yuan Jin’er, no clue why she came up—if he wants answers, he can go ask you himself.”
“So you’re saying I threw myself at you and got the cold shoulder…”
“Point is, he’s got his eye on me now, and that’s on you.”
“I’m not even that close with him…”
In truth, there wasn’t much real disagreement between them—but arguing was its own kind of game, about not backing down even when there was nothing much to fight over. After a good back-and-forth, Ning Yi sat down by the tea tray and poured himself a cup; Yuan Jin’er argued a bit more, then appealed to Nie Yunzhu to settle it, but Yunzhu only smiled and stayed neutral, refusing to take sides, and Yuan Jin’er stalked off in a huff.
As the morning sun began to show in the east, Ning Yi sat quietly drinking his tea. Nie Yunzhu hugged her knees, silent for a long moment, before finally looking down with a small smile. “What happened last night, honestly, was me being willful. Jin’er only stirred things up further because she was following my lead—heh, she’s naturally the type who loves a bit of chaos anyway, Liheng… don’t hold it against her, if you can help it…”
“It’s fine, I actually found it pretty entertaining.” Ning Yi smiled, glancing toward where Yuan Jin’er had disappeared. He wasn’t one to fuss over every small detail and calculate costs and benefits down to the last coin, though he certainly had his moments of doing exactly that—whether he cared or not was, in the end, just a matter of how he chose to look at it. “Though I do wonder how much she promised the Swallow Jade Pavilion in exchange for going up there like that.”
“Jin’er and Madam Chen go way back. I heard she’s agreed to help choreograph dances for the girls at Swallow Jade in return—I’ll help out with that too, it’s no trouble.”
Only then did Ning Yi nod. “As long as it doesn’t get too out of hand.”
“But… going forward, things might get a bit more complicated…” Nie Yunzhu thought for a moment before speaking quietly. “The matter with… with Old Master Qin—should I go pay him a visit myself and apologize, decline the offer that way? Might be better…”
This was, in truth, the matter that most needed discussing. Ning Yi looked at her for a long moment. “You’d already been thinking about this before you went up on stage?”
“Mm.” Nie Yunzhu nodded. “I thought about it some, though not too much.”
She looked faintly apologetic. “In the end, I’ve still caused you trouble, Liheng…”
“It’s nothing serious.” Ning Yi shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Still, that matter really isn’t something to take lightly…”
“True enough. I’ll go speak with him.”
“I know Old Master Qin too, and he’s always been kind to me—it might be better if I go…”
Ning Yi thought it over, then smiled. “Let’s do this—in a few days I’ll find some time, and we’ll go together, apologize together. Declining the whole adoptive father-daughter arrangement isn’t something that should cause him too much trouble either way; I’ll handle the rest, you don’t need to worry.”
“Mm.” Nie Yunzhu answered, nodding. This time she didn’t say sorry again, didn’t mention being a burden again—simply being able to do this together left her feeling happy and at ease.
Before going up on stage, she’d thought some things over, had known that Liheng, up there on the second floor, wouldn’t have minded some minor trouble either way—but once she took the stage, whatever gossip followed would surely stick to her as well. She had once dreaded exactly this kind of situation; having finally endured her way out of that world of flowers and willows, for two years afterward she’d been wary even of going out too much or getting unnecessarily close to such places again. She’d simply been too tired, unwilling to get entangled in that kind of trouble again.
But this time felt different. Liheng didn’t mind, yet she found that she herself did mind, deep down. It was only then that she realized just how much she cared—and by comparison, all her old fears suddenly felt insignificant. Her heart had found something to hold onto now. Wanting to go up on stage and play for him—that much, at least, was clear to her.
She’d wanted to do it, and so she’d simply done it.
“Things in the city have been a bit tense lately—they might close the gates again. Liheng, maybe you should hold off on your morning runs outside for a while? Worried it might not be safe.”
They chatted a bit more, and as Ning Yi prepared to leave, Yunzhu finally said this. Ning Yi nodded.
“Once the gates close, I won’t be heading out this early in the morning to run—I’ll drop by during the day now and then instead. It’s you ladies who really need to be careful. The general order should hold up well enough, but that kind of atmosphere can easily turn into trouble.”
“Mm.”
Nie Yunzhu nodded, waving as she watched his figure recede into the distance. Turning back, she noticed Yuan Jin’er, Hutao, and Kou’er all peering out through the gaps in the window. She let out a sigh, then smiled, feeling a faint sense of loss mixed with quiet contentment—because in a few days, Liheng would be taking her along to apologize together.
Meanwhile, back at home, Ning Yi found breakfast already prepared in the room; Su Tan’er broke into a smile the moment she saw him. She’d already heard about what had happened at the Swallow Jade Pavilion the night before…
“I hear my husband made quite a splash last night…”
She said it lightly enough, but the smiles on Su Tan’er’s and the three maids’ faces were distinctly mischievous—clearly they’d all been discussing this already and were still finding it plenty amusing, unable to help themselves…