In the silent standoff, I felt I should give up. Over the past year of being together, I had slowly lost myself. I had started to hope that there was something more between us than there should be.
My relationship with Lin Chongtan was just a deal.
I didn’t want to look at his face anymore. I used all my strength to push him away. For a moment, I wanted to leave this place and go somewhere quiet where no one could find me. But this was my Third Uncle’s house. If I went out late at night, my Third Uncle would probably find out.
I had nowhere to go, so I could only curl up on the bed. Because I didn’t want to see Lin Chongtan, I pulled down the bed curtains to hide from him.
“Xiao Di,” Lin Chongtan’s voice sounded close by. I ignored him and kept my eyes tightly shut. But he would not give up. He actually opened the curtains and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Time passed slowly. We continued to ignore each other. After a long time, I suddenly felt something cold against my neck.
It turned out that Lin Chongtan was putting something on me. He was giving me a small gold sheep on a red string. The sheep was chubby with short legs and looked very cute.
My zodiac sign is the sheep.
I came back to my senses and tried to pull the red string off. Seeing this, Lin Chongtan held my hand down. “This was blessed by a master at the Thousand Buddha Temple. Even if you are angry with me, please do not take it off, okay? It is very late. You should sleep.” As he spoke, he put another object next to my pillow and stood up as if he was going to leave.
“Stay right there,” I called out to him. At the same time, I picked up the object next to my pillow.
It was a seal.
I had seen the jade material for this seal in Lin Chongtan’s drawer before. At the time, I thought the jade was very clear and beautiful, so I looked at it a few times. He noticed it then and asked if I liked it. I knew that jade was much more precious than the seal Teacher Ming gave me, so I was too embarrassed to say I liked it.
I asked Lin Chongtan, “Is this my birthday gift?”
He turned his head. For some reason, I thought he looked very fragile at that moment. Maybe it was just my imagination.
When had Lin Chongtan ever been fragile? Wasn’t he always powerful and talented? Wasn’t he always the person everyone praised?
He nodded slightly. I looked at him for a moment and then suddenly pointed to something he had left on my table. “What is that?”
Lin Chongtan looked where I was pointing. He paused before saying, “It is a telescope.”
“A telescope? What is that?”
He was silent for a while before bringing the object over.
It was very well-made and felt cold to the touch. It had a bronze-colored cover with patterns on it that I didn’t understand. I had never seen a telescope before, so I didn’t know how to use it. Lin Chongtan taught me to look through one end of the long tube. He also told me I could turn a part of it to make things look bigger or smaller.
Only then did I understand why it was called a “far-seeing mirror.” When I looked through it, I could clearly see a tiny bird on a painting across the room.
I held the telescope gently and said, “I want this as my birthday gift. Give this to me.”
But Lin Chongtan refused. “I cannot give you this, Xiao Di. You can have anything else, but not this. This was a gift from the Crown Prince.”
“I want this one!” I stared at him.
Lin Chongtan frowned at me, as if he thought I was being difficult for no reason. I was being difficult. I already knew the Crown Prince gave it to him because the box had the palace’s mark on it.
“If you give this to me, I will stop being angry with you.” I gripped the telescope tightly. But he still shook his head and said he couldn’t give it to me.
I felt so embarrassed. I roughly pushed the telescope back to him and turned my face away.
“Xiao Di,” he called my name again.
I bit my teeth hard. I thought to myself, “What’s the big deal?” It was just a new toy from the West that the Prince gave him. I would have things like that in the future too… No, I wouldn’t. In the eyes of people like them, I was just a toy myself.
The more I thought about it, the sadder I felt. I ripped the gold sheep from my neck and threw it on the floor. “I don’t want your gift. If you want me to stop being angry, give me the poem you wrote a few days ago.”
Lin Chongtan had written a poem. No one else had read it yet. Even I could tell that once people heard it, he would become famous all over the world.
Lin Chongtan looked at the gold sheep on the floor. His lips pressed into a thin line. He leaned over, picked it up, and carefully wiped the dust off with his fingers before turning to speak to me. But as soon as he said two words, I rudely interrupted him.
“Will you give it to me or not? If you don’t, never think about making me do that kind of thing with you again.” I was still angry. I remembered how embarrassed I felt under him, and the things people said about me.
They said I was loose. They said I was played with so much that my legs shook. They called me a “shameful woman.”
“That kind of thing is disgusting,” I forced the words out. “It’s so disgusting!”
The light in Lin Chongtan’s eyes faded. He seemed to be angry too. He, who was usually gentle, now stared at me with anger, as if he wanted to hit me.
At this point, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I stared back at him like a fighting bird. On my birthday night, we had held each other in a small boat, and he had kissed me gently. Today, we looked at each other like enemies, as if we wanted to see what was inside each other’s hearts.
In the end, Lin Chongtan gave in. But I didn’t feel like I had won.
He said, “Fine.”
The next morning, I woke up and sat in a daze for a while. Then I quickly called out to Liangji to ask what time it was. Liangji heard me and walked in. “Master Chun, why are you awake so early? You still have half an hour before you need to get up.”
I hurried to put on my shoes. “I didn’t finish my punishment writing last night. It’s too late now. Liangji, help me prepare the ink.”
When I walked to the desk, I froze.
Liangji came over and saw the papers on the desk. “Master Chun, you must be confused from sleep. Isn’t it all finished? But Master Chun, why did you write so much?”
There was a thick pile of paper on the desk, at least a hundred sheets. Teacher Li had ordered me to copy an article fifty times. Yesterday, I had only finished twenty.
The handwriting on the other eighty pages looked exactly like mine. If I didn’t remember clearly that I hadn’t finished, I would have thought I wrote it myself.
I didn’t say anything for a long time. After my fight with Lin Chongtan last night, I had gone back to sleep and completely forgotten about the punishment.
While Liangji was helping me get ready, I was distracted. Then he asked curiously, “Master Chun, did the Second Master give you that thing on your neck?”
I touched my neck and realized the gold sheep I had thrown on the floor was back on my neck. I wanted to take it off, but I suddenly remembered how he had wiped it clean with his hand.
Instead of taking it off, I held it in my hand and nodded.
Liangji was very happy to know it was a gift from Lin Chongtan. He was always like that. He was happy whenever he saw me getting close to Lin Chongtan.
Liangji said that Lin Chongtan would definitely be a high official in the future, so it was good for us to be on good terms.
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t that simple. But without knowing it, I had also fallen into a trap. I had mistakenly thought that if I had a good relationship with him, things would change.
Teacher Li didn’t notice that I hadn’t finished the writing myself. After checking it, he scolded me a few more times and then let me go.
About ten days later, something happened. Teacher Li was caught taking money from students in secret.
After a deep investigation, the Imperial Academy found out he had been doing this for a long time. They even found many rare antiques in his home.
Because of this, the students all signed a letter saying a person with such bad character shouldn’t be a teacher. Teacher Li left the Academy in shame.
Lin Chongtan and I were still acting awkward toward each other. Meanwhile, something else happened. The students from the upper class went on an autumn trip. A young lady fell into the water and claimed that Lin Chongtan had saved her.
This rumor spread quickly. Even my younger cousin heard about it. He asked his mother, “Mother, is Brother Tan going to get engaged?”
Before my Third Aunt could speak, my Third Uncle spoke first.
“Don’t talk nonsense. Your cousin hasn’t passed his exams yet, so how could he get engaged? Those rumors are just lies. Many people saw that day that your cousin didn’t even get the bottom of his robe wet.”
After her two daughters got married, Third Aunt spoke more directly. “It must be because Tan is too excellent. Those girls are so desperate for him that they would risk their own reputation by making up such stories.”
My younger cousin was still small and didn’t quite understand. After saying that, Third Aunt turned to me and warned me never to save a girl who fell into the water. If there were no servants around to help, I should make Liangji do it.
I nodded awkwardly. I thought to myself that no girl would ever try to trap me like that. If one did, I would probably thank her.
Lin Chongtan became busier and busier. He didn’t come back to Third Uncle’s house during his breaks, and sometimes he wasn’t even at the Academy. After not seeing him for many days, I showed the poem he gave me to the new teacher, Teacher Xu.
The day after I showed the poem to Teacher Xu, Lin Chongtan appeared at my room. I was surprised to see him. It was late autumn now, and the capital was very cold. He was wearing a dark blue fur coat. The high-quality fur around his collar framed his handsome, pale face.
He heard me come back and turned to look at me. But when he saw Teacher Xu standing next to me, his expression became much colder than before.