Spring Returns to Me

My mother had gotten hold of a narrow strip of red silk, too short to make a new garment, so she cut it in half.

She used one piece as a ribbon, tying back her black hair and adding an azalea blossom. Men who came to buy wine couldn’t help turning to look at her.

She fashioned the other half into a bright red silk flower for her wrist. Against her skin, pale as frost, it looked like a vermilion mark.

In the end, she made the young master of a salt-merchant family fall madly for her.

My mother got her wish and married into a wealthy merchant’s household.

She thought she had found a good husband. From then on, she would no longer have to toil from dawn to dusk; surely she would live in comfort for the rest of her life.

The hands that had once been stained with millet flour grew slender and soft under the young master’s care.

When their affection was at its height, he even painted her nails red himself.

But only after marrying into the family did she discover the truth.

My father already had three concubines.

They spent all day fighting for his favor, smashing things and weeping at the slightest provocation.

All of it was to win a little of that man’s attention, to preserve some dignity in the inner household.

In a merchant’s family, every frown and smile, every meal and drink had a price.

Love was the cheapest thing of all.

Before my mother’s beauty had even faded, my father had taken a fourth and then a fifth concubine.

So she could only teach me the same lessons again and again.

“Du Yuning, you must climb higher!”

“A woman has nothing besides her looks. If you have to sell yourself, then make sure you get a high price.”

“Without a man’s favor, you’re nothing. You won’t get a thing.”

“If you marry, marry into a noble family! Don’t make my mistake and entrust your life to the wrong man.”

“You must climb to a higher branch, become the wife of a high official, the wife of a duke—be a phoenix perched on the highest bough!”

And yet, my mother’s own life was far from good.

Mine was no better.

The fabric for my clothes was whatever the other concubines had left over.

The pastries I ate were the ones no one wanted from the small kitchen.

When Sixth Concubine came down with peach-blossom eye, my mother tore petals into pieces and secretly mixed them into pastries.

That was how I got to eat freshly made osmanthus cakes.

Once, a maid responsible for the Grand Madam’s clothes caught a chill after being out in the wind. Somehow, while doing the laundry, she mixed in a new bolt of silk, and the precious fabric ended up in a well.

In the end, I got a new outfit made from Suzhou brocade.

But when I was six, I came down with a high fever and drifted in and out of consciousness. My mother could only stand outside Fifth Concubine’s courtyard gate, pleading desperately over and over.

My father wouldn’t open the door. She could only stand there blankly, repeating the sweet words he had once spoken to her.

Laughter and flirtatious talk from a woman inside the courtyard rang out, while the wind and snow nearly drowned out my mother’s voice.

I climbed out of bed and walked barefoot into the courtyard.

The wind drove snow against my face, cutting my skin.

I lifted the cold water we used to water the flowers and poured it over my head.

The chill pierced to the bone, as painful as a knife carving through my heart.

That day, I collapsed in the snow, but still struggled to crawl all the way to the courtyard gate.

Only when I was nearly dead did I finally attract the neighbors’ attention.

That was how I got a bowl of hot medicine.

From that day on, I understood that no one would place good things in my hands for no reason.

If I wanted something, I had to rely on myself.

I had to flatter, deceive, scheme, fight, and take.

When I was thirteen, my mother finally found her opportunity.

She arranged to save a nobleman, then fabricated lie after lie, and eventually secured a distant kinship with the Marquis of Zhenyuan’s household.

After telling me the same instructions countless times, she sent me in a carriage to the capital.

Then she threw herself into a well.

Just like that, I became a young cousin with a deceased mother and nowhere to turn, living as a dependent in the Marquis’s residence.

03

When I first arrived at the Marquis’s residence, I was constantly on my guard.

I thought that a powerful family living in such luxury and splendor must have strict rules and undercurrents of conflict.

But at the New Year’s Eve family banquet, the Marquis fussed endlessly because his wife had taken another sip of cold wine. He took her cup away and replaced it with a bowl of hot soup.

Shen Xingyi rolled up his pristine white sleeves, carefully peeled chestnuts, and set the golden kernels in front of Pei Yunzhao when she returned from her lessons.

Even when a maid doing heavy work accidentally broke a precious teacup, her master only chided her gently, then told someone to sweep up the shards at once so no one would step on them and get hurt.

Everyone in this household seemed to wear a gentle smile.

…What a strange family.

I couldn’t understand how such a family could exist.

Back then, I often hid in the shadows behind a corridor pillar, watching them laugh together in the flower hall.

The flames in the red clay brazier flickered, lighting Shen Xingyi’s profile.

He had suffered from a wasting illness since childhood. His skin was so pale it seemed almost translucent.

His black hair, dark as ebony, was loosely pinned with a simple silver hairpin. His long lashes drooped, casting a dark-blue shadow beneath his eyes.

He lifted his gaze and noticed me hiding behind the pillar.

So he smiled and beckoned me over to sit beside him. Then he peeled a sweet, fragrant honey tangerine roasted over the brazier and placed it in my palm.