Chapter9

Honored Guest Arrives (Part Two)

Yu Manyi had never done such a thing before—or perhaps, whenever something involved Song Qi, it was always her first time.

When she returned to the carriage, the coachman was still lying on the ground, fast asleep. Yu Manyi tightly drew the curtain shut, lifted her skirt to her knees, and then began laying the newspaper she had just bought from the newsstand layer by layer along the inside of her thighs.

The sales of Song Qi’s newspaper were truly dismal. The boss didn’t just have this month’s issues, but also last month’s, and even the month before that. Yu Manyi bought all of them in one go, and also asked for a rope the boss used for tying up delivery boxes. She folded the papers neatly and used the rope to tightly bind her left thigh together with the newspaper. She took a few steps within the carriage to test it out, worried that the newspapers might fall off in public. When she sat down again, she undid the loose knot and pulled the rope tightly, tying a firm dead knot on her leg.

Well then—her wrist had been bruised by Song Qi, her ankle had been bruised by herself, and now, for the sake of buying his newspaper, her thigh was also bruised from being tied. The marks he left on her over the years were always like this—fortunately, the ones on her body faded easily with time. But those that truly hurt, strangely, left no trace at all.

In this frantic mess, Yu Manyi finally secured the newspapers. Then, she felt the carriage jolt—the coachman had returned. He used his whip to rouse the dozing horses, then lifted the curtain and reminded Yu Manyi that the post office was open. She nodded with forced calm, then stepped down from the carriage, holding that letter she couldn't publicly show, and walked alone toward the post office.

It was Yu Manyi’s first time at the post office. She had imagined it as some rare, unfamiliar place, but upon entering, found it no different from a pharmacy—except that the cabinets in the back held not medicinal herbs but letters and parcels sent to Shaoxing from various places. On the wall hung a simplified chart of mailing fees. Yu Manyi did a quick calculation and suddenly felt uneasy.

She had just spent all the money her third aunt gave her on buying newspapers. The postage for registered mail to Europe was expensive—she didn’t have enough left.

There weren’t many people at the post office around noon. In front of Yu Manyi was only an old man sending a package. She stood dazed behind him, watching as he unwrapped his parcel, gently touched and inspected it. That package must have been important to him too—he rewrapped it with a cloth he brought, layer by layer, and, urged by the staff at the counter, finally signed his name one last time.

When the old man turned around again, the young girl who had just been standing behind him was already gone.

…

Yu Shenshi noticed that her adopted daughter, Yu Manyi, had recently become quite promising.

She had started diligently writing letters to her cousin, nearly one every ten days. After finishing each one, she would actively request postage money, and then go to the post office on her own to mail it. She never objected to sharing the letter’s contents with Yu Shenshi. If the latter found her wording too subtle, she would obediently revise her phrasing—and the boldness and flirtation between her lines were enough to make Yu Shenshi’s heart skip a beat.

As far as Yu Shenshi knew, Master Yu had always strictly controlled the textbooks used by the girls in the family’s private school. The most important one was Nü Jie (Precepts for Women), which taught women to respect and obey their husbands, defer to their in-laws, and be harmonious with their uncles and sisters-in-law. All the words Yu Manyi could read were ones selected from that book. Yu Shenshi was amazed—how had Yu Manyi, having read only that single book, managed to master all those bedroom words that even she herself only understood after getting married?What made Yu Shenshi feel even more ashamed was that, although she felt a little embarrassed listening to Yu Manyi read out those affectionate letters to her virtuous nephew, she actually didn’t dislike hearing such things. It reminded her of when she was a child, secretly standing outside the theater to listen to ballads. Moreover, the purpose of these letters was ultimately to pave the way for her third son’s future inheritance of the family business. Yu Shenshi asked herself honestly and realized she didn’t truly intend to get to the bottom of it all.

Watching Yu Manyi’s darkened eye circles each morning from staying up late to write, Yu Shenshi lowered her head to sip her tea, and for the first time, she felt a sense of “mother-daughter unity.”

But of course, Yu Manyi knew clearly that those dark circles were not from writing family letters, but from... staying up late reading newspapers by candlelight.

Ever since Song Qi left the Yu household half a year ago, that underground cellar had once again found a new use—this time, as Yu Manyi’s study. She took advantage of a time when no one was watching the storeroom and stole several dozen candles. Then each night, she would diligently go to the cellar, light the candles, and carefully read the newspapers she had bought during her trips to town under the pretense of mailing letters. If the nights were too cold, she would even burn those letters that were never actually mailed to warm herself by the firelight.

The newspaper’s content was exactly as Song Qi had described—page by page without deviation. The main serial featured stories of free love between young men and women, full of twists, bold entanglements, and wildly different from the traditional storybooks Yu Manyi had read in her early years. They were tales of mandarin ducks and butterflies, of love as deep as the ocean and fated as the heavens. She paid attention to the bylines of each installment and discovered that the story had multiple contributors. Whenever others wrote, the story became mediocre and full of cliché. Only when the pen name “Qi Song” took over would the plot suddenly twist with every line vividly leaping off the page. When Yu Manyi read the most heart-wrenching parts, she would pound her chest alone in the dark cellar and think: if she ever saw Song Qi again, she would make him introduce her to this “Qi Song.”

If she still wasn’t sleepy after reading the romance serials, she would flip through the supplement pages about freedom, democracy, and ideology. But she couldn’t summon much interest in those topics—instead, she felt regret over the poor quality of the illustrations. Song Qi once said his paper only had wildflowers and weeds. Now Yu Manyi finally saw it: not only weeds and flowers but also some kittens and birds in recent issues. Unfortunately, the illustration skills were terrible—the cats didn’t look like cats, the birds not like birds—completely unworthy of the passionate love stories in the main section.

Spring brought life to everything, and Yu Manyi's mind began to stir. After several more trips to the post office under the excuse of mailing letters, she finally snuck into the study one late night and stole some of her second uncle’s brush, ink, paper, and inkstone. Then in the cellar, she ground the ink and laid out her paper, painting a vivid magpie.

She cut the magpie out and pasted it onto the newspaper illustration, then picked up her brush and painted a peony. That night, Yu Manyi stayed up especially late, offering layout suggestions for Song Qi’s paper and drawing countless sample birds, beasts, and flowers for him to choose from. She returned to her room just as dawn was breaking, hid the newspaper she had altered under her pillow, and placed the letter to her cousin in plain sight on her dressing table, preparing to take both to the post office in a few days.

But this time, she wasn’t going just to make a show of it—she was going to truly send a letter. She would fill out a registered letter to the address listed after the line “Reader feedback, please send to,” and mail her illustration samples to Song Qi, asking him to pass along her admiration for “Qi Song.”

After all, the inspiration that allowed her to write so eloquently to her cousin came entirely from the words penned by Qi Song.

This farcical mistake lasted through the entire spring and into half the summer. As the cicadas buzzed louder, the third aunt—once delighted by Yu Manyi’s diligent letter writing—grew increasingly uneasy.

In the spring, she had been anxious because her virtuous nephew’s letters were few and far between, with not even a passing mention of his fiancée. That had prompted her to devise a plan to get Yu Manyi to take the initiative and reach out. She believed that the barrier between man and woman was no more than a thin paper screen. If the girl was proactive, the boy—at the very least out of courtesy—would surely write back, especially given how unmistakably flirtatious Yu Manyi’s tone had become.

But spring had come and gone, and still not a single reply had arrived from Europe.Third Aunt was always suspicious—she had to be. For her childlessness, she chose to suspect her husband. And when there were no replies from Europe, it was only natural that her suspicious gaze would turn toward Yu Manyi.

She had previously shown Yu Manyi a bit of motherly affection, which led her to unconsciously overlook many irregularities. Now that her guard was up again, those irregularities became glaringly obvious. She noticed that Yu Manyi was always drowsy during breakfast. She also realized that the letters supposedly written to her virtuous nephew contained an abundance of unusual phrases—like “free love.”

So then, where had she heard such things?

She was the unfavored daughter of a concubine from the Shen family, and now she was the lawful wife of the Yu family's Third Young Master. She was not a foolish woman. The moment Yu Manyi once again left the Yu residence with that so-called overseas letter in hand, Third Aunt immediately summoned another pre-prepared carriage to the front gate and followed her to the town.

And then she saw everything that ignited her fury.

The coachman seemed to have drunk knockout medicine—he fell fast asleep the moment they arrived at the market. As soon as he nodded off, Yu Manyi leapt off the carriage openly, crossing the crowded marketplace without fear, and skillfully struck up a conversation with the newspaper vendor. Then she pulled out her money—the very private stash that Yu Shen-shi had saved, meant for mailing letters to her virtuous nephew overseas—and used it to buy a front-page newspaper printed with a man and woman on it!

Third Aunt suppressed her temper and continued waiting. When the post office opened in the afternoon, Yu Manyi got off the carriage again. This time, she was no longer holding a newspaper but rather the letter she had spent every day pretending to write. With a cold face, Third Aunt silently followed her, watching as Yu Manyi wandered around in the crowd with the letter in hand. She didn’t even line up at the counter. Instead, she nonchalantly stuffed the letter back into her clothes and walked out of the post office as if nothing had happened!

She did all this with such practiced ease that she didn’t even notice the pair of furious, flame-spitting eyes by the entrance. And since they weren’t yet back home, Yu Manyi walked faster than usual. Third Aunt keenly observed that her stride lacked the usual decorum of someone raised in a respectable household—it was as if something was tied around her left leg.

Staring at that carefree figure, any remnants of the fantasy of "mother and daughter united in purpose" vanished completely.

Meanwhile, Yu Manyi blissfully got back onto the carriage, took a nap without worry, and waited as the coachman watered the horses and set out on the return journey. She leaned on the window, watching the rice field ridges roll past, her heart filled with speculation about the next episode of the serialized story in the newspaper. Her good mood lasted until the moment she jumped down from the carriage and stepped through the threshold of the Yu family courtyard. The instant she looked up, the smile on her face froze.

Her Third Aunt, the Third Young Madam of the Yu family, Yu Shen-shi, stood at the courtyard gate holding a disciplinary ruler, coldly locking eyes with her.