Many years ago, Lu Wanning first met Han Yao on a foggy morning. The sky was bright enough to sting the eyes, yet the sun was nowhere to be seen it was strange weather, all in all.
“Go put on a mask.” Lu Jiahui smacked her on the head. “Kids who breathe in too much smog turn stupid.”
“Then why aren’t you wearing one?”
Lu Jiahui flew into an embarrassed rage. “When I tell you to wear it, wear it! So many questions!”
Even at her young age, Lu Wanning understood one truth deeply: talking back to her mother never ended well. So she obediently went and got a mask to put on.
The job of working as a maid in a wealthy household was one Lu Jiahui had gotten through a connection. Otherwise, something this good would never have come her way decent pay, room and board included, a position people fought tooth and nail for. Before this, she could only pick up scattered hourly housekeeping gigs, and her income was anything but stable.
Lu Wanning had heard these words so many times her ears had grown calluses.
“It was hard enough getting them to agree to let me bring a kid along to live here. What job these days would let me show up with a child in tow! You have to keep your head down, you hear me? Don’t wander off, or we’ll both end up sleeping on the streets.”
“Okay, okay, okay.”
Lu Wanning understood that much, so in that enormous mansion that belonged to someone else and seemed endless, she never wandered.
Every morning she obediently took the bus to school from the back entrance, and every evening she returned through it as well, doing her best to minimize her presence living like a rat parasitizing the place.
But here, the kitchen always had plenty of near-expired food to throw out, and every day Lu Jiahui would bring her lots of good things to eat.
So Lu Wanning figured being a parasite was pretty pleasant too.
Only occasionally, looking at the production date printed on a milk bottle, she’d be puzzled. “Doesn’t this say yesterday?” Why throw it out?
“Their young miss is delicate,” Lu Jiahui said. “She only drinks it fresh.”
“Yesterday isn’t fresh?”
“It has to be air-shipped the same day within three hours.”
Lu Wanning was speechless, muttering, “Might as well just drink straight from the cow.”
“Oh no!” Lu Jiahui, who had been lying on the bed, took one look at the sky, smacked her forehead, and scrambled up. “It’s going to rain. I have to go help over there. Quick, go bring in the blankets, I just hung them out this morning!”
At some point the sky outside had turned dark and sullen, heavy with clouds. Wasn’t it supposed to be smog?
Mother and daughter had no time to say anything more. Grabbing an umbrella, they left the room and split up, running in different directions.
Lu Jiahui usually hung the blankets out on that patch of lawn where hardly anyone ever came. Lu Wanning knew the way by heart, and from a distance she spotted the familiar clothesline and,
A girl she had never seen before, sitting before an easel.
It was early spring. An apricot-yellow shawl was draped over her shoulders, her black hair falling down to cover most of her face, an oil-paint palette cradled in her hands.
Lu Wanning didn’t know her, and had no intention of speaking to her. But the instant she looked up, she collided with the girl’s gaze. As their eyes met, she suddenly heard her own heart give a heavy thump.
The colors on the canvas had begun to take shape, vivid and brilliant, reflected on the girl’s exquisite face. Her still, seated form seemed, for a moment, to have stepped right out of an oil painting so unreal it was dizzying.
Was she really not a porcelain doll?
A few raindrops fell, snapping Lu Wanning back to her senses. She realized that if she didn’t move fast, the laundry was going to get soaked, so she rushed forward and swiftly gathered everything in, folding up the drying rack.
The quilt wasn’t big; folded and held in her arms, it was just barely covered by the edge of her umbrella hanging by a thread.
Without another thought, Lu Wanning sprinted back to her room with the quilt.
Perfect not a drop of water on it.
She went to the bathroom to wash her face, and suddenly remembered that girl.
Who was that? She’d never seen her around here before.
Lu Wanning sat in her room, staring straight out the window. The rain had turned fine and dense, heavier than before. Somehow, as if bewitched, she couldn’t get the stranger’s face out of her mind.
She didn’t have an umbrella.
Might as well do a good deed? So thinking, Lu Wanning fished a spare umbrella out of the storage cabinet, gripped it in her hand, and ran off in the same direction.
Nothing on the lawn had changed. The girl was still sitting where she’d been, only now the easel had been knocked askew by the wind and drizzle. Her hair was dotted with raindrops too, but she didn’t seem to mind, her lashes lowered.
Lu Wanning, panting after the run, dashed up to the girl and held out the spare umbrella: “Hey!”
Thunder was starting to rumble overhead; she had to shout to be heard.
“It’s raining! What are you just sitting there for?”
Only then did the girl look up, her expression flat, betraying no emotion.
She said softly, “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” Lu Wanning curled her lip.
Impatient by nature, and seeing that the girl wasn’t taking the umbrella after so long, she simply shoved it into the girl’s arms only to accidentally knock the girl off balance, sending her stumbling backward.
How could anyone be as light as a sheet of paper?
Lu Wanning’s eyes went wide. Luckily, she had quick reflexes and caught the girl, or she’d have fallen into the mud.
“It’s raining why are you still out here?”
The girl said nothing, only glanced down at her cloak, now crumpled where Lu Wanning had grabbed it. After a moment, she said, “Then where should I go?”
What a strange question. Wherever you came from, go back there, obviously. But Lu Wanning didn’t think it through: “If you’ve got nowhere to go, come to my room.”
She couldn’t even explain why she had inexplicably brought an umbrella to a stranger, invited her to shelter from the rain in her room, and even carried the easel and painting supplies for her.
Lu Jiahui still had plenty to deal with over at the main house every time it rained, there was a mountain of work for the household staff and two people in the room wouldn’t feel crowded anyway.
“Sit,” Lu Wanning said, gesturing, and picked up her unfinished milk, downing it in one go.
The girl stood by the door, utterly out of place here, her gaze landing on the milk bottle. After a long pause, she said, “It’s expired.”
That was the second time today she’d heard this opinion. Lu Wanning scoffed: “It’s from yesterday, how is it expired? I’m not some young miss”
Her mouth moved faster than her brain. Halfway through the words “young miss,” something clicked, and she stared blankly at the girl, her pupils suddenly contracting.
Only now did Lu Wanning belatedly realize who the girl was.
Free to wander around here painting at will, plus that cloak that looked expensive at a glance.
Who else could it be in this household? How had it taken her this long to figure out?!
“Whatever’s unfinished gets thrown out the same day,” the girl said the next moment. “Did you steal it?”
Her tone was calm, as if she didn’t care at all.
Lu Wanning sprang up from her chair with a jolt. “No! It wasn’t me!” Her chest heaved violently. “I didn’t steal anything!”
“Then what?”
Lu Wanning was anxious as an ant on a hot pan, but she bit her lip, unable to speak.
Dividing up the food thrown out by the kitchen each day was an unspoken rule among the servants after all, what poor people couldn’t stand most was waste. Better it go into their stomachs than into the trash, right? The housekeeper turned a blind eye and let them be.
But the young miss clearly knew nothing of this. If she spoke up, wouldn’t she get everyone in trouble? But… but if she didn’t say anything, the suspicion of theft would never be washed away, and she and her mother would surely be thrown out.
What should she do?
Lu Wanning was so frightened she began to cry. Han Yao had finally found this job, and she didn’t want to be the reason they both ended up sleeping on the streets.
She stood there helplessly, letting the tears fall. The girl gazed at her quietly, then suddenly reached out, her fingertip gently wiping away Lu Wanning tears along her cheek.
“Why are you crying?” the young miss said. “Only just now realizing who I am?”
Lu Wanning nodded with a tremble, too frightened to speak. She felt her face had become a toy, being played with between those ice-cold fingertips.
They were about the same age, yet somehow she felt utterly overpowered by the other girl.
Lu Wanning didn’t dare breathe, and suddenly she felt soaked all over, sticky and damp the rain-wet trouser legs curled into a bunch at her ankles, the tears still on her cheeks, the corner of her mouth not yet wiped clean from the milk she’d just drunk.
No, it wasn’t just that.
There was also that gaze, so close yet so indifferent, like rain silently turning into shackles, making her back slick with sweat just like the window being battered by the relentless rain, with nowhere to escape.
And yet the young miss’s voice was so gentle.
“Do you regret bringing me home?”
Lu Wanning, afraid she really would throw them out, shook her head frantically.
But later, she would think…
If she had said she regretted it that day, would none of what came after have happened?
Then Han Yao would never have looked at her through the misty haze, the room thick with the smell of blood, a knife clutched in her palm even as it cut her, she wouldn’t let go asking her over and over, “You regret it, don’t you?”
Those beautiful eyes curved, a smile playing on her lips even at a time like this, she smiled without showing her teeth. But on the pure white dress, red flowers had bloomed.
Calm, as if reciting a poem.
“Are you trying to leave me?”
No matter how Lu Wanning begged, wept, raged, or screamed, Han Yao’s face kept that same unchanging expression, her smile clear and shallow as water, and she would say softly:
“You know I can’t live without you.”
In that moment, Lu Wanning’s tears fell like rain, and she thought that perhaps she, too, was close to no longer being able to live.
But the Lu Wanning of now was still alive.
Her roommate casually crumpled the sticky note with the lemon drawing and tossed it into the trash. Lu Wanning instinctively stood up. “Wait.”
“Huh?” Her roommate jumped, watching in bewilderment as Lu Wanning fished the note back out. “What are you doing?” The trash can was filthy.
Lu Wanning didn’t know how to explain.
Things Han Yao gave her couldn’t be thrown away. She would be unhappy, and then no one would have a good time.
As for how Han Yao knew about such small things she always had her ways. After all, she was Han Yao.
Lu Wanning silently pocketed the note and went to wash her hands. Her roommate followed her in, worried: “Wanning, are you okay? You’ve seemed off all day.”
“I’m fine.”
Lu Wanning stared at her reflection in the mirror, her face pale, and suddenly said, “I might have to move out.”
Her roommate’s eyes went wide with shock: “Are you crazy? Have you forgotten how long it took us to find a place this affordable and close to campus? Where would you even go?”
Lu Wanning didn’t know the answer either.
With Han Yao around, where could she go?