Shen Chenbi had recently acquired a new hobby.
—Climbing over walls.
Of course, she was not climbing out. Even with ten times the courage, she would never dare defy her Older Sister’s prohibition.
She climbed within her own residence—from her little courtyard into the abandoned garden next door, then over the low wall from there to the rear annex. After walking along the roof ridge for a stretch, she would finally slide down the wall behind the pomegranate tree, landing just beside the pomegranate tree in the garden.
The ingenious part of this route was that her feet never touched the ground outside the residence. Strictly speaking, it did not count as “going out.” Besides, going around from behind the pomegranate tree allowed her to avoid Uncle Zhou’s line of sight.
Shen Chenbi was quite pleased with this discovery of hers. She felt that her brain was occasionally useful after all.
She did not climb walls in order to do anything bad. She was simply bored. Her Older Sister had been even busier lately, often disappearing for the entire day. Before leaving, she would hurriedly toss out a single instruction—“Stay put”—and then be gone.
Qingzao, on the other hand, followed her without leaving her side, but Qingzao could not stop her from climbing walls—because Qingzao could not climb over them herself.
That afternoon, Shen Chenbi once again climbed over her courtyard wall with practiced ease and followed her secret route to the garden.
The garden was exceedingly quiet in late spring. Most of the pomegranate blossoms had already withered, leaving a layer of petals like red silk scattered across the ground. They felt soft beneath her feet. Crouching under the pomegranate tree, she used a branch to draw eyebrows in the dirt. After two strokes, she decided they did not look right, smoothed them out, and started over.
Just as she was absorbed in her drawing, a commotion suddenly came from beyond the wall.
Shen Chenbi raised her head and looked toward the sound.
The place where she was standing happened to adjoin the outer wall of the Shen Residence’s rear garden. Beyond the wall was a secluded back alley where people rarely passed under ordinary circumstances. But at that moment, it seemed that someone was arguing outside. She vaguely heard a woman’s voice, cold and hard, as though tempered in ice.
“Move.”
Then came a man’s greasy, unpleasant laughter.
“Little lady, don’t be in such a hurry to leave. Our young master only wants to invite you to have a cup of tea—”
Shen Chenbi frowned.
She was not very clever, but she recognized that tone. A few days earlier, when that man surnamed Liu had barged into the private room at the teahouse, he had spoken in much the same way. Although he had been polite in his wording at the time, that sticky, cloying quality was exactly the same as in the man outside the wall.
She pressed her ear to the wall and heard disordered footsteps. The woman seemed to be retreating, while the footsteps of several men pursued her closely. Someone was laughing, and someone else was saying something about how she should not refuse a toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit.
Shen Chenbi looked left and right. Beside the wall was a back door that had not been opened in years. Its bolt had rusted, but she knew that the door could actually be pushed open.
The last time she had climbed the wall, she had accidentally bumped against it and discovered that the bolt had not been fastened properly at all.
She hesitated for a moment.
Her Older Sister had said she was not allowed to go out.
But this back door led straight into the alley, and strictly speaking… once she went through it, she would be outside. Her Older Sister had said that the outside was dangerous. Her Older Sister had said not to meddle in other people’s business.
She bit her lower lip.
Then she pushed the door open.
There were four people in the back alley.
Three men and one woman.
The woman had her back against the wall. She was slender and wore a somewhat worn blue cloth jacket. Her hair was neatly tied at the back of her head, and she held a short saber in her hand. Its tip pointed outward, her grip steady, and not the slightest trace of fear showed on her face.
The three men had surrounded her in a half circle. The leader was reaching out to snatch her saber, laughing vulgarly.
When Shen Chenbi poked half her body out from behind the door, everyone’s gaze fell on her.
The alley was dim, and she stood in the shadow behind the door, revealing only half her face and one eye. But even half a face was enough to make the three men freeze for a moment.
Shen Chenbi did not notice their looks.
She gazed at the woman surrounded in the middle and blurted out, “Do you need help?”
The woman tilted her head slightly and swept her a glance.
The glance was extremely brief, yet it took in Shen Chenbi from head to toe—from the crooked wooden hairpin in her hair, to the mud smeared on her sleeve cuffs, and finally to those eyes that had absolutely no idea what fear was.
“No need,” the woman said flatly.
Shen Chenbi gave an “Oh,” then pulled her head back inside.
The door closed again.
The alley fell silent for a moment.
Then the three men began laughing again, apparently finding the scene absurd beyond words—a girl hiding behind a door, poking her head out to ask a pointless question, then closing the door again, looking exactly like an idiot who had forgotten what she meant to do halfway through doing it.
The leader reached out another half inch.
“Little lady, about that saber of yours—”
Before he could finish speaking, the woman moved.
Separated from them by the door panel, Shen Chenbi heard several muffled thuds, followed by the sound of heavy objects hitting the ground. Then came the noise of something being dragged across the ground. Finally, someone knocked twice from the other side of the door.
“Hey.”
Shen Chenbi cautiously opened the door a crack.
The woman in blue stood outside.
She held the short saber in one hand, blood staining the back of the blade. With her other hand, she gripped one man by the back of his collar. His face was bruised and swollen, and he was whimpering and begging for mercy. Two others lay sprawled in the alley—one facedown by the base of the wall, while the other lay on his back in the middle of the ground. Both were groaning.
Shen Chenbi looked at the men lying every which way in the alley, then at the woman before her, who was half a head shorter than she was, and sincerely exclaimed, “You’re amazing.”
The woman in blue stared at her expressionlessly, as though she were looking at some rare species.
After a moment, she asked, “How has someone like you managed to live this long?”
Shen Chenbi thought about it, then answered seriously, “I listen to my Older Sister.”
“…Then why did you come out just now?”
“Because I saw that you needed help.”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh.” Shen Chenbi nodded, accepting this fact. “Then you’re pretty amazing.”
The woman in blue fell silent for a moment. She realized that the person before her did not follow the same logic as normal people, but her tone was so sincere that there was no way to argue with her.
She could not even determine whether this person was foolish or simply too innocent. If she was foolish, at least she had had the courage to open the door and ask whether help was needed. If she was clever, then after asking, she had closed the door again, without considering for a moment what was wrong with doing so.
“What’s your name?” the woman in blue suddenly asked.
“Shen Chenbi. Chen as in ‘a sinking fish,’ and Bi as in jade.”
“And you?” Shen Chenbi asked in return.
The woman in blue paused.
“Wen Wan.”
“Which Wan?”
“Wan as in ‘At dusk, the sky is about to snow.’”
Shen Chenbi let out a “Wow.”
“That sounds lovely.”
Wen Wan did not respond. She turned her head and looked at the dust from the wall rubbed onto Shen Chenbi’s shoulder, then at the mud on her sleeve cuffs. Finally, her gaze settled on the rust-covered bolt behind Shen Chenbi.
“This door is broken,” Wen Wan said.
“I know.”
“Does your Older Sister know?”
Shen Chenbi thought about it, then answered honestly, “She probably doesn’t.”
Wen Wan was silent for a moment. She casually tossed the man she had been dragging into the corner, then pulled a thin iron pick from inside her robe. After prodding the bolt a few times, she made the rust-covered latch give a soft click as it snapped tightly into place.
“Fixed.” She slipped the iron pick back into her sleeve. “Don’t open the door whenever you feel like it.”
Shen Chenbi tried pushing it. Sure enough, it would not budge. She looked up, her expression filled with both surprise and disappointment.
“How did you do that?”
“A skill that puts food on the table.”
“What do you do for a living?”
Wen Wan did not answer the question. She turned, hauled up the man on the ground, and walked several steps toward the alley’s entrance. Then she suddenly stopped and looked back at Shen Chenbi.
Shen Chenbi was still standing in the doorway, one hand held in the position she had used to push the door. The setting sun shone from behind her, gilding her outline.
She tilted her head. Her peach-blossom eyes were filled with curiosity, utterly lacking the self-awareness one might expect from someone who had just passed through the scene of a brawl.