Thud! A bolt of pain shot through my knee. I opened my eyes blearily, just about to look back and see which bastard had dared kick me,
but before my vision had even cleared, I caught sight of people on both sides of me. We were all wearing the same dresses, their long hems spread across the floor. A little light filtered through the carved window lattice, and the whole room was so quiet it was terrifying.
As I wondered why it was so silent despite all these people, a shuffling footstep sounded. The girls kneeling on either side had their heads bowed, their shoulders shaking like leaves in the wind. Their teeth chattered uncontrollably.
What was going on?
I was just wondering whether this whole transmigration thing had really happened to me when something cold pressed against my chin. Damn it, that had to be a cold weapon,
The chilly flat of a sword lifted my chin, not gently. Before I could think, I slowly raised my head with the force of it and saw an excited-looking boy, around sixteen or seventeen.
“Why aren’t you afraid?” he asked, his voice tinged with interest.
When his words reached my ears, they were clearly a string of foreign language, yet somehow I understood every word.
Strange. I could understand him, but my lips wouldn’t move—my tongue felt tied in a knot, and I couldn’t make a single one of those strange sounds.
Then I’d smile.
I forced what I thought was an exceedingly bright smile. From the corner of my eye, I saw the boy freeze for a moment, then burst into laughter.
He laughed so hard he doubled over, the sword in his hand swaying along with him.
All I could do was awkwardly laugh along.
“Her.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the two girls beside me began kowtowing like mad, their foreheads thudding against the floor as they cried out in heart-wrenching voices, “Your Majesty, spare us!”
Your Majesty?
Before I could grasp what that title meant, a group of attendants rushed in.
The room descended into chaos. Only then did I see that dozens of people were kneeling behind me. The girls struggled as they were dragged away, their screams piercing my ears. The boy was clearly annoyed. His smile vanished, and he raised his hand and struck with his sword.
Blood splattered all over me. I froze.
Warm liquid splashed across half my face and trickled down my chin. The girl on my right was still kneeling, but her neck was now nothing but a stump.
In a panic, I pressed my head to the floor, hiding my horrified, terrified expression.
The floor was wet and sticky. Only then did I realize the entire room was stained red with blood. Who knew how many people had died before us?
The boy turned and walked toward the inner chamber, his hem trailing through the pool of blood as his footsteps faded away.
I didn’t dare move. My knees were pressed against the slippery floor. The blood had already gone cold, sticking my skirt to the ground, and its stench made me retch again and again.
Two Gray-Robed Maids came in through a side door.
With both knees on the ground, they inched into the room. They kept their heads very low, their chins pressed to their chests.
I stared at their strange way of moving.
One of them crawled on her knees up to me and stopped. Without ever raising her head, she simply extended a hand and made a “please” gesture toward the door. The other had already turned around and was kneeling her way back out.
The meaning was clear: follow them.
I braced myself on my knees and stood up, my legs so weak I nearly fell right back down.
I didn’t know how much time had passed. My legs had long since gone numb, and as the blood began flowing through them again, pins and needles prickled across them.
The maids stood up only after they had left the room.
I followed them through a long corridor. A bronze lamp stood every three paces beneath the eaves. Its flame was small, just bright enough to light the path underfoot.
The two of them walked without making a sound.
No one spoke.
I had no intention of speaking either. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to—I genuinely couldn’t.
This body’s ears could understand the language here, but its mouth couldn’t keep up at all. Those sounds required the root of the tongue and the throat to work together to make a strange tremble, and I couldn’t do it.
Not bad. I could understand but couldn’t speak—a natural mute persona. No acting required.
Say less, make fewer mistakes; say nothing, make none. That was a life-saving rule wherever you went.
They led me into a small room. A bronze mirror sat on a low table, with a comb, a fine-toothed comb, and several pottery jars beside it.
A wooden tub stood against the wall. Leaves floated on the water’s surface, and steam rose from it.
One of the maids pointed to the tub.
I understood.
It was only when I took off my clothes that I really looked at this body. Thin—not the well-proportioned kind of thin, but the kind that came from starvation. Each rib stuck out beneath the skin.
The moment I sank into the hot water, I nearly cried out. I had wounds all over that I hadn’t noticed; I only realized they hurt when the hot water touched them.
The two maids set to washing me. Their movements were practiced, their faces and emotions blank.
I didn’t know how to describe the feeling they gave me. They were like soulless robots.
I endured the stinging pain all over without making a sound.
It wasn’t because I was especially tough. I knew that if I didn’t comply now, I might lose my life,
and dying without even figuring out what had happened to me would be far too unfair.
After the bath, I changed into clean clothes. The fabric was much better than what I’d been wearing before, with delicate patterns embroidered at the cuffs and collar. The maids sat me in front of the bronze mirror and began undoing my hair.
The bronze mirror was blurry, but it reflected a face.
My features were decent, with a hint of delicacy around the brows and eyes. But my skin was sallow, my cheekbones jutted out, and my lips were covered in cracked, dead skin. My hair was dry, yellow, and tangled—like I had a bundle of straw on my head.
The maid used a fine-toothed comb to scrape away the lice eggs bit by bit, then applied ointment and worked it through my hair. She didn’t pull painfully once during the whole process.
Her carefulness sent a chill down the back of my neck.
—Even pigs get shaved and bled before they’re put on the chopping block.
Once my hair was combed, they applied a thin layer of powder. I looked in the bronze mirror again. At least I looked like a living person now.
One maid left the room and soon returned with a tray. On it was just a bowl of rice porridge.
The white porcelain bowl was small enough to hold in one hand. The rice porridge was thick, topped with chopped Walnut Kernels and pine nuts.
Hungry.
My hand trembled as I took the bowl. It was hunger. I had no idea how long this body had gone without a proper meal, but its stomach had shrunk to the size of a fist.
Thick and hot, it slid down my throat, the rice’s fragrance wrapped in the rich oils of the nuts.
Delicious.
It was gone in fewer than three mouthfuls.
There was only enough to line the bottom of my stomach; it stirred up my hunger, then stopped.
—They’d even calculated exactly how much to feed me.
The maid took away the bowl and handed me a cup of water. I rinsed my mouth and spat into a bronze spittoon.
Then a hand reached over and grabbed my chin.
My whole body tensed. Instinctively, I tried to recoil, but the hand was astonishingly strong, clamping tightly around my jaw. Another maid came close, pried my mouth open, and scraped my tongue with a bamboo sliver wrapped in fine cloth.
Open my mouth, close it, lift my head, lower it. I followed every instruction.
The bamboo sliver scraped around inside my mouth. After scraping my tongue, they wiped the insides of my teeth, then had me rinse again.
By the time all this was done, it was completely dark.
The maid led the way. The flagstones beneath my feet glimmered a dark red in the lamplight. I couldn’t tell whether that was their natural color or something that had seeped in and could no longer be washed away.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
After turning through two covered corridors, we returned to that nightmare of a room.
The moment the door opened, I smelled a sweet floral fragrance.
I crossed the threshold.
The room was bright with candlelight. Curtains hung on the walls, and the window lattice had been polished until it gleamed, without a speck of dust.
There wasn’t the slightest trace of blood in here.
I looked at the spot where I’d knelt that morning, and a clear image surfaced in my mind: the girl on the right was still kneeling, her body intact below the neck, but everything above it gone. Blood sprayed from the severed stump, warm and fishy-sweet, smearing half my face.