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In the dim red light of a brothel room, the patron’s eyes follow the girl’s movement as she plays the guqin. The composition is simple, unsophisticated. The girl wasn’t trained for long or she wasn’t trained well. Her posture is decent at least, her wrists delicate. Her eyes are cast downward, half-hidden behind a curtain of long lashes, the rest of her face covered by a pink veil in a show of false modesty. She is a little too tall, too old — not what this patron would choose himself. But the madam recommended her to him personally — their new girl, on her first night serving clients — and he wasn’t opposed to some novelty.
The girl’s fingers stumble over a note, unpleasant to his ear. She tries to save it, but the next notes ring false as well, and the patron loudly puts the wine cup down. The girl doesn’t flinch. Interesting.
“Enough,” he says with disdain, and the sorry concert finally ends. “Come here,” he adds lazily, and she raises gracefully to float over, hovering over where he is spread on the side of the bed before he grabs her wrist and yanks her into his lap.
“I said come here,” he says pleasantly and delights in the hitch of her breath before she steadies herself a little. “You can’t play music,” he continues in an even voice, “and you’re not even showing your face. What good can you be to me?”
The girl swallows quickly before answering in a quiet, gentle voice, more melodious than the music she bored him with. “Young master, please forgive this lowly servant...”
He pulls on her hair, his other hand crushing her wrist. This time she does flinch, as if wanting to move away from him, and he delights in that momentary pause when she realizes she has nowhere else to go.
“I asked you a question,” he says, easing his hold again. “But I didn’t tell you to answer, hm?”
Her eyes flicker to his face for just a moment before she catches herself, closing them again. They have a lovely shape, especially when they widen from pain or fear. Her complexion too is nice and pale and it should bruise easily. He lets go of her hand to caress the curve of her body up to her neck, lingering there until her pulse quickens.
“Don’t worry if you aren’t a great beauty,” he says in a low, breathy voice when he catches the gauzy material of her veil between his fingers. “I might yet find a use for you.”
He tears the veil off and then feels the smile freeze on his face.
“My beloved husband,” his second concubine says with a terrifying grin, her lower lip split and a trail of dried blood leading down her chin, as she looked the last time he saw her on the day of her death. “Wasn’t I useful enough for you in my life already?”
“A-Mi-Ming.” He tries to push her away but finds himself unable to as she leans into him, takes his hand in hers and puts it on her cheek, a bloody tear trailing down her face.
“Don’t worry, my beloved,” she says in the same gentle voice. “I served you well in life, and I will serve you well even in death.”
The candles flicker and as they go out one by one, the patron starts to scream.
It’s late into the night when the last of the merchant’s drinking companions goes to sleep. Not that the merchant would know what time it is: he can barely remember his name, and he probably couldn’t name the town or the tavern he’s staying in. He stumbles through the emptied corridor, followed by a long shadow cast by the lantern in his hand.
He has a craving for more than wine. When he had asked the waiter for light, he added: do you also have a girl I could use? Cackled, when the old man chose to ignore him. It’s fine, it doesn’t matter — the merchant has a refined taste in women and there was only one that caught his eye that evening.
Slender figure and prominent chest, lips pink like flower petals, and eyes like two obsidian pools. She was pretending to ignore the merchant’s company, but her eyes kept darting towards them, compelling. She was traveling without a father or a brother to accompany her, either brave or desperate, or both. She drank her water slowly, in short sips.
But the merchant felt magnanimous that night. He put an arm around his younger brother who was traveling with him for the first time, pointed at the girl with his chin.
“Here,” he offered loudly. “Do you remember what I told you, didi? Why don’t you put this knowledge into practice?”
The men around the table burst into laughter, encouraging the boy — go on, little brother, live a little — and he stood up decisively, hiding his blush behind a forced smile. He went to treat the girl to some wine, which she reluctantly accepted and then offered to walk her to her room, which she tried to decline. But in the end, the merchant was a good teacher. It’s been a couple of hours and his brother hasn't come back downstairs.
Before the girl left with him, she turned around, met the merchant’s gaze briefly and her eyes, filled with beautiful melancholy, seemed almost familiar to him for a moment. But he would remember this kind of woman if they had ever met before and even if not, the girls who did recognize him on second meeting were usually resentful if he was lucky and hysterical if he wasn’t.
He pushes open the door to the room he shares with his brother. He stumbles inside, lighting up the dark interior. As he raises his lantern, he only sees one person lying on the bed — where did the woman go? — and then a glimmer catches his eye. Above the bed, written in a still-wet dark ink, there is a neat row of characters, gibberish before he realizes that it’s a list of female names — his eyes fly open as he starts recognizing them.
“Didi, what is the meaning of this?” he asks loudly, catching at his brother’s arm to shake him awake. “You...”
His hand comes up covered in the same dark ink. His brother’s body rolls onto his back, and the merchant sees two wide-open empty eyes, a lifeless lopsided smile on his face, and the deep cut on the left side of his chest from where the dark liquid flowed to soak the sheets and pool before the bed.
The lantern falls out of his hand.
“No,” the merchant stutters out. “But it wasn’t him! He didn’t...”
He tries to take a step back, slips on the puddle of blood and falls back, still trying desperately to crawl away.
“It wasn’t him,” he repeats helplessly, “it wasn’t him.”
A shadow moves. Someone picks up the lantern he dropped. The merchant freezes as a quiet female voice reaches his ears.
“Yes, it wasn’t him,” she says. “So there was no need to teach him a lesson.”
The old servant has watched her, a new kitchen girl, the whole day.
She isn’t very bright, that’s for sure. Not used to helping in the kitchen, spoiled perhaps by her parents, before one tragedy or another struck the family and forced them to send her to work in the wealthy man’s house.
Or perhaps she came here herself, tempted by the visions of beautiful interiors and even more beautiful masters with soft pampered hands. She seems to listen intently when other maids gossip about the house’s young master, lamenting for his poor soon-to-be wife, as if all these little whores didn’t dream of the young master putting a child in their bellies and raising their status to be his concubines. The old servant smiles with satisfaction when the cook smacks the back of the girl’s head to force her back to work.
She gets smacked again for working too slowly and for not being meticulous enough. One more time for cutting the vegetables wrong and two more times for listening to gossip. She bears it patiently, apologizing in a quiet voice, but she visibly forces herself to hold her tongue. It gives her plain, boring face something of an interesting look, and she is well-groomed and well-built enough to not be a sore sight. The few times she catches the old servant watching her, she lowers her head quickly, her hands twisting into the fabric of her skirts.
In the late evening, when the moon is already high in the sky, the cook sends her one last time to bring more water for the next morning. She goes without a word, swaying on her feet, and the old servant rises from his place by the stove to follow her into the moonlight-lit dirt path that leads to the well. It’s a little ways from the servants’ quarters and a longer distance from the master’s mansion. Doesn’t matter either way; even if the girl, inexperienced as she is, tries to scream, nobody would come to check.
He stops behind a corner to wait for her to walk back and eventually hears her steps again. Waiting against the wall, he surges forward when he sees the shadow of her silhouette. Catches nothing but the air and doesn’t get the chance to look around in confusion before there’s someone pushing him against the wall and pressing a cold blade to his neck. When he looks up, he sees the girl he was tailing — same clothes, same hair — but her face has transformed somehow, turning her from a meek servant girl into an inhumanly beautiful woman, her lips blood-red and tilted into a mockery of a smile.
“A ghost,” he lets out, trembling, and she raises her brows.
“I’m not here for you, old dog,” she says slowly, her eyes flashing black as she moves even closer. “So I won’t kill you. However...”
Her eyes move down his body, linger on his crotch, before flicking up to his face again. The blade in her hand catches moonlight as she pulls it away from his neck.
“It’s alright,” the ghost says with a vicious smile. “You can scream.”
On a gray morning, a single oriole call breaks the silence of a remote house.
Hidden from the rest of the world behind a beautifully-painted red folding screen, a woman is brushing her hair. He follows the rhythmical movement of her arm until she puts the comb away, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
“Feng-lang,” she says, her lips forming a smile she doesn’t seem to be aware of. “Go back to sleep; we both have our matters to attend to in the morning.”
“What if I would prefer to watch you transform instead?” he asks and she tilts her head to the side, considering him. The scarred tissue on the side of her face looks even more grotesque in the candlelight.
The first time Yu Qiufeng asked Qianqiao to show him her true face, she smiled mockingly and said, “What if it scares you to death?”
“Then I will die in the arms of a beauty,” he answered then, and the smile fell off her face as she pushed him back towards the bed.
“Suit yourself,” she says now, raising a brow, and he walks closer to stand right by her, showing his intent to watch. “If it will make you appreciate the effort put into your lover’s beauty.”
“Qianqiao,” he answers, catching her chin and turning her face away from the mirror. “You already are beautiful.”
His back still aches from where her nails left deep scratches there, her scars rough under his fingertips; but the kiss he gets in reward is sweet and full of promise.