Lately, Shen Chenbi had begun to suspect that her older sister might have been possessed.
She had merely gone to the street to buy a box of rouge. When she returned, Shen Wenyu blocked her at the gate and launched straight into a furious tirade.
“Out again? Out again?” Shen Wenyu snatched the rouge box from her hand and threw it into the pond without even looking at it. “Tell me—who were you going to meet?”
Shen Chenbi stared blankly as the rouge that had cost her two taels of silver sank to the bottom. Her heart ached so badly that her eyes reddened. “Sister, I only bought some rouge…”
“You got dressed up this beautifully just to buy rouge?” Shen Wenyu looked her up and down, her gaze sharp as a knife. “Do you know how many pairs of eyes are watching you out there? Do you know—”
She suddenly stopped, as though she had remembered something, and her expression grew even more unpleasant.
Shen Chenbi felt terribly wronged.
What had she dressed up for? She had not even applied lip rouge. She was wearing nothing but a half-worn goose-yellow blouse, and she had casually pinned up her hair without even putting in a single hairpin. When she had passed the bronze mirror earlier, she had caught a glimpse of herself. A strand of loose hair stuck up at her temple, making her whole person look droopy, like a flower bud struck by frost.
—And even like this, her sister was still dissatisfied?
“From now on, cover your face whenever you leave the house.” Shen Wenyu dropped the words and turned to leave.
Shen Chenbi: “…”
Shen Chenbi had been beautiful since she was little. She knew it herself.
When her mother had still been alive, every time she took Shen Chenbi to a banquet, some madam or another would seize her hand and refuse to let go, marveling aloud, “How was this child raised? She looks as if she stepped right out of a painting.”
Back then, Shen Chenbi had been too young to understand what it meant to be beautiful. She only knew that the madams’ hands were rather strong when they pinched her cheeks, and that it hurt.
As she grew older, she gradually began to understand something from the way other people looked at her.
Whenever a maid did her hair, she would often stare blankly at Shen Chenbi’s reflection in the mirror, leaving the comb suspended in midair for ages without remembering to lower it.
When Shen Chenbi went to the temple to offer incense, worshipers would still turn around again and again even though she was wearing a veiled hat. Some people walked into pillars, while others stepped on their companions’ feet.
Once, she had been swinging in the courtyard of her own home when the young master from the neighboring residence climbed onto the wall just to catch a glimpse of her. As a result, he lost his grip and fell from the wall, breaking his arm, yet still tilted his head up at her and grinned foolishly.
After that, Shen Chenbi stopped going out very often.
It was not that she was afraid of people looking at her. She was afraid that people would get hurt because they looked at her.
Besides, her sister had been better than her at everything since they were children. She was proficient in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting; she handled household affairs with ease; and even when scolding people, she could go on for half an hour without repeating herself.
And Shen Chenbi?
Her sister’s exact words had been, “Shen Chenbi, besides that face of yours, what else do you have?”
Shen Chenbi thought about it and decided that statement was inaccurate.
She also had a kind heart.
—Although her sister said that was not kindness, but simply being an empty-headed fool.
Shen Chenbi did not care. She had been stupid since childhood. She learned to read and write more slowly than other people and could never properly learn the rules of etiquette. She did not speak until she was three, did not recognize all the characters in her own name until she was five, and spent three months memorizing the Three-Character Classic at the age of eight, yet still knew only the first two lines. Her tutor was so furious that his beard stuck straight up, and he declared that he had never seen such an incorrigible blockhead.
Shen Wenyu, sitting nearby, coldly added, “Please do not waste your effort, sir. She is not a block of stone. She is fine jade. A block of stone can at least be used to pave a road. Fine jade, apart from looking pretty, is fucking useless.”
The tutor was left speechless.
Shen Chenbi did not even realize that she was being insulted. Instead, she thought her sister had praised her by calling her fine jade, and cheerfully poured her sister a cup of tea.
Shen Wenyu held the cup and looked at her sister’s carefree smile. Her expression suggested that she wanted to splash the tea into Shen Chenbi’s face, but restrained herself.
When their mother had been alive, she had often sighed and said that Shen Chenbi had “grown a clever-looking face for nothing, since it came paired with such an utterly useless brain.”
Shen Chenbi accepted both descriptions.
She truly had no great ambitions. Her greatest wish was simply to marry a husband who would treat her well and live a peaceful life with him.
But lately, her sister was bent on extinguishing even that wish.
“From now on, you are not allowed to speak to any man.”
“You are not allowed to accept anything from any man.”
“You are not allowed to make eye contact with any man for more than three breaths.”
Shen Chenbi counted out the three rules on her fingers, then asked blankly, “What if someone speaks to me first?”
Shen Wenyu’s gaze sharpened. “Who? Who spoke to you? What is his name? Where does he live? When did he speak to you? What did he say?”
Shen Chenbi jumped at her reaction and stammered, “N-no one… I was just asking…”
Shen Wenyu stared at her for a long while before suddenly reaching out to touch her head.
The gesture was very light and very slow, as if she were making sure Shen Chenbi was still alive.
“Bier,” she called her by her childhood name, her voice gentler than usual. “Your sister is doing this for your own good.”
Shen Chenbi’s eyes stung, and she nearly burst into tears.
It had been a very long time since her sister had called her “Bier.”
Ever since that serious illness half a year ago, Shen Wenyu had seemed to become a different person. The gentle, dignified older sister she had once been had suddenly become cold and sharp-tongued. There was always an emotion in the way she looked at Shen Chenbi—one that Shen Chenbi could not understand.
It seemed like fear.
And yet it also seemed like guilt.
Shen Chenbi did not understand what her sister was afraid of, nor did she understand why her sister felt guilty. She only knew that there seemed to be a terrifying secret hidden in her sister’s eyes.
“Sister,” she asked softly, “is there something you’re hiding from me?”
Shen Wenyu’s hand stopped.
After a moment, she withdrew it and once again became the cold-faced, sharp-tongued Shen Wenyu.
“What could I possibly have going on?” she said blandly. “As long as you go out less, see fewer people, and cause me less trouble, I will have nothing going on.”
With that, she turned and walked away.
Shen Chenbi stood where she was, watching her sister’s back disappear at the end of the covered corridor. She could not shake the feeling that there was something wrong with the way her sister walked—as though something invisible and terribly heavy were pressing down on her back.
She sighed and lowered her head to look at her empty palm.
The rouge was gone.
It would probably be even harder to go out next time.