Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Yet from the day I arrived, no one in the Xu household treated me as an outsider.

The servants had worked for my parents for years. There was something strange in the way they looked at me, but it did not make me uncomfortable.

Only much later did I understand.

They were looking at a child who had lost her way for years and finally come home.

At first, the older servants kept finding excuses to talk to me. Then they pressed all manner of treats and toys upon me, as though coaxing a child.

I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

Hanqing was very good to me. He knew how to be an elder brother. He never made me feel like a guest.

Early in my second month at home, a heavy snow fell.

Hanqing asked me to fetch him a cup as naturally as though he had always done so. Water bubbled on the stove, sending up steam.

I folded my arms.

“Too lazy to move in winter, are you? And now you're ordering your precious little sister about?”

He gestured invitingly and smiled.

“These are Yangzhou's first spring buds of the year. I haven't brewed them on the stove before. Stop talking nonsense. Do you want some or not?”

I yielded at once.

“It's only right that I should do as my elder brother asks.”

Even from where I stood, I could smell the tea's sweet, clean fragrance. Of course I wanted some.

When I brought the cups, he poured for me first.

My cold fingertips gradually warmed against the cup. One sip drove some of the chill from my body.

He sat opposite me, his features softened by the steam. Outside, snow fell thickly.

Suddenly, he straightened.

“When I said Mother and Father always hoped you would come home, I wasn't lying.”

I looked up. His voice caught.

“They went to the capital in the summer two years ago. Shuangshuang, you did meet them.”

10

When I learned that my biological parents were dead, I had been filled with regret. Heaven had seemed so miserly that it would not grant us even a single meeting.

Only now, from Hanqing, did I learn that before their deaths, we had met once.

It was the summer I was fourteen.

The switch between the two families had already been discovered. Hanzhu had returned to the prince's household and cut off all contact.

My parents had searched for news of me. They learned that I had been sent to the capital as a hostage and raised by the Empress Dowager, deep within the palace.

They traveled all that long way to find me.

But I lived in the palace year-round. They waited and tried everything they could think of, yet still could not see me.

At last, in despair, they prepared to return to Yangzhou.

It happened to be the time of the Empress Dowager's birthday celebrations. I had ordered a gift from a shop outside the palace and gone to collect it myself.

Someone fell in the street, scattering belongings across the road. My carriage stopped.

Over the noise of the crowd, I heard the guards driving people away. I lifted the curtain and saw a woman who had been knocked down directly in front of us.

“Wait!”

I frowned, stopped the guards and climbed out.

I helped her up and used my handkerchief to wipe the dirt from her sleeve.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

She kept her head lowered and shook it. For some reason, she looked deeply distressed.

Then she looked up to thank me, and her whole body went still.

Tears spilled from her eyes. Thinking she must be injured, I told the palace maid beside me to take her to a physician.

Her lips moved. Tears fell from her cheeks onto the back of my hand.

I leaned closer, waiting to hear what she wanted to say.

But someone interrupted.

The Crown Prince rode up and called to me.

“Shuangshuang, if we wait any longer, we'll miss the birthday banquet. Grandmother is waiting for you. Come along!”

I had to leave.

The woman still said nothing. She stood in the crowd and watched me go, intent as though she would never see me again.

Just before she vanished from view, I turned back without knowing why.

She and her husband stood together, both looking at me.

The carriage left the busy street. Its wheels carried me steadily farther away until I could no longer see them.

That was the only time in my life that I met my parents.

The tea was too hot.

So hot that something deep inside me trembled, and my hands shook.

I took a sip. At last, I grew calm.

Hanqing filled my cup again. His voice sounded a little easier.

“Before they died, Mother and Father told me that their little girl was kind and tenderhearted. If you ever came home, they wanted me to pass on a message.

“‘We were not granted enough time together in this life. May our bond bring us together in the next.’”

I thought about that.

We had never known each other, yet the moment I met the Xu family, they felt like old friends.

There was a bond between us after all.

In another life, I would surely have the chance to grow up at my parents' side.

Then I would tell them: however long it took, however far I had to go, I would always find my way back to them.

Snow quietly covered the eaves. In the courtyard, only the sound of boiling water remained.

I smiled and asked Hanqing, “What was my original name?”

He dipped a fingertip into a little melted snow on the railing and wrote on the wooden table, stroke by stroke.

I leaned over to look.

Xu Wei.

What a lovely name.

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