The day Xiao Yu came to call was one of those rare days blessed with fine weather.
The sky was high and the clouds were sparse, the sunlight warm and gentle. Even the sparrows in the pomegranate tree chirped more cheerfully than usual.
Shen Chenbi was crouching in the courtyard, drying her eyebrow pencils. She had spread all of them out on a piece of cotton cloth and arranged them in a row according to shade, from deep black to pale gray, neat and orderly, as though she were holding a meeting for the eyebrow pencils.
Qingzao crouched beside her, handing her the pencils one by one and muttering, “Miss, eyebrow pencils don’t need to be dried, do they?”
“They do.” Shen Chenbi did not even raise her head. “It rained the past two days, and the tips got damp. The color doesn’t come out right when I draw with them.”
“How do you know the color doesn’t come out right?”
“I tried it.” Shen Chenbi pointed to her left eyebrow. “I drew this one yesterday. Can you tell the difference?”
Qingzao stared at her young mistress’s eyebrows for a long while. To be honest, she could not see any difference at all. Both brows curved gracefully above those lovely almond-shaped eyes, their shades perfectly balanced and their arcs elegant, like the distant mountain shadows of dark ink painstakingly polished by a craftsman.
“Miss,” Qingzao said honestly, “even if you drew them with a charcoal pencil, you couldn’t make yourself look ugly.”
Shen Chenbi was dissatisfied with that answer and was just about to give Qingzao a lesson on the differences between the shades of eyebrow pencils when she suddenly heard a commotion coming from the front courtyard.
A carriage had stopped outside Shen Residence.
That in itself was nothing unusual. The Shen household was engaged in commerce, and people connected to their business often came to call. But the commotion today was somewhat greater than usual. Uncle Zhou moved three times faster than normal, hurrying all the way to open the gate.
“My name is Xiao Yu. I am Vice Minister of Rites and Grand Tutor to the Crown Prince. I happened to be passing by your residence today, and have come especially to pay a visit to Eldest Miss Shen.”
His voice was not loud enough to carry across several courtyards to Shen Chenbi’s ears.
Completely unaware, she lowered her head and continued arranging the eyebrow pencils.
At that moment, in the front hall, Shen Wenyu’s fingers suddenly clenched around the edge of the account book the instant she heard the announcement.
Xiao Yu.
She had waited too long for this name—and feared it for too long.
In her previous life, this man had come to call in the same way. No—he had chosen a day when she was not at home, and, wearing a gentle, harmless smile, knocked on the gates of Shen Residence. That day, her younger sister happened to be swinging in the rear courtyard, her skirt billowing as her laughter scattered through the courtyard like the chime of silver bells. Xiao Yu had stood outside the moon gate and watched for a long time.
Later, she had thought back to that afternoon countless times and asked herself countless times: If she had been at the residence that day, would none of it have happened?
There were no ifs.
In her previous life, she had failed to stop him. In this life—
“Uncle Zhou.” Shen Wenyu set down the account book. Her voice was so calm that it hardly seemed to come from fingers clenched so tightly. “Please invite Lord Xiao to the front hall for tea. I will be there immediately.”
Uncle Zhou acknowledged her and left.
Shen Wenyu rose and walked to the bronze mirror. She straightened her collar and smoothed her hair at the temples. The woman reflected in the mirror had dignified features and a sharp gaze; not the slightest flaw showed. She drew a deep breath, took something from the drawer, and slipped it into her sleeve.
Then she pushed open the door and walked toward Shen Chenbi’s courtyard.
Shen Chenbi was lying on her stomach on the ground, using a fine-tipped brush to draw the seventeenth style of eyebrow on a sheet of paper, when a shadow suddenly fell over her. She lifted her head and saw her older sister standing before her, her expression colder than usual and her lips pressed into a straight line.
“Bier.”
“Mm?”
“Listen.” Shen Wenyu crouched down so that their gazes were level and spoke each word distinctly. “There is a guest at the residence now. Go back to your room and bolt the door. No matter what you hear, you are not to come out.”
Shen Chenbi blinked. “What guest?”
“That isn’t important.”
“Then what did he come for?”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
“Then he—”
“Shen Chenbi.” Shen Wenyu called her by her full name, and there was something in her tone that made Shen Chenbi afraid to ask any further. “Go inside.”
Shen Chenbi obediently set down her brush and stood, patting off her skirt. She could tell that her sister was not asking her opinion. There was fire in her sister’s eyes, burning fiercely, yet she was desperately forcing it down so no one could see. Shen Chenbi had seen that look only once before—half a year ago, after her sister had recovered from a serious illness. The first thing her sister had done upon waking was seize her hand tightly and stare at her face for a long time, her eyes rimmed red, without saying a word.
She did not ask anything more. Gathering up the eyebrow pencils and cotton cloth from the ground, she followed Qingzao back to her own courtyard. Once inside, she bolted the door, then crouched beside the window and peered outside through the crack.
Qingzao asked nervously from beside her, “Miss, what happened?”
“I don’t know.” Shen Chenbi pressed her eye to the crack in the window. “Older Sister seems very angry.”
“Eldest Miss is angry? Then we’d better hide even more carefully.”
Shen Chenbi hummed in acknowledgment, but her eyes did not leave the crack. She saw her sister’s back pass through the moon gate and head toward the front hall. She walked very quickly, her back straight. One hand hung at her side while the other was hidden in her sleeve, making it impossible to see what she was holding.
She had never seen her sister walk so fast.
From her courtyard, the front hall was out of sight. She could see only the covered corridor leading there. At the end of the corridor stood a pomegranate tree. One of its branches had withered the previous winter. Uncle Zhou had said it needed pruning when spring arrived, but he had never gotten around to it.
Shen Chenbi stared at that withered branch and suddenly felt a little uneasy. She did not know why. The sunlight outside was clearly warm, and the sparrows were chirping merrily, yet she could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Qingzao tugged at her sleeve. “Miss, stop looking. Come sit down.”
“I’ll look a little longer.”