Xiao Yi turned his head, his gaze falling on Eunuch Liu. The gentle smile in his eyes slowly froze as he pulled back his hand and continued to play with the wooden hairpin.
"Your Highness?"
Eunuch Liu felt quite apprehensive. After all, if the Second Miss of the Cui family found out, the sky would fall.
Xiao Yi was silent for a few breaths before waving his hand slightly. "Go on, and make sure it's done cleanly."
Eunuch Liu immediately complied and turned to leave.
Xiao Yi lowered his eyes, continuing to carve the wooden hairpin in his hand. "Yunfeng likes magnolias. A magnolia hairpin... I'm sure she will love it."
...
The next day.
Cui Yunfeng had holed up in her room for two days straight, yet she still couldn't escape Cui Yunchu's daily greetings.
She watched listlessly as Cui Yunchu strolled in as casually as if she were wandering her own courtyard, and couldn't help but sigh.
"Even if we are biological sisters, we still need a little privacy, okay?"
At the very least, you could knock.
Cui Yunfeng patted her white cat, shooing it under the bed, and sat up straight. "Didn't we finish writing everything yesterday? What is it now?"
Cui Yunchu glanced at Cui Yunfeng and brazenly sat down on the edge of her bed. "I'm here to collect a debt."
"??" Cui Yunfeng was completely baffled. "What debt?"
"You previously owed me a set of jewelry that you never gave me. Also, a few days ago, you secretly met with Xiao Yi but used the excuse of cursing me. You ought to compensate me."
Cui Yunfeng was speechless. She thought she had forgotten about that.
Setting aside the previous debt, she said, "Xiao Yi was the one who said it. Why don't you ask him for it?"
"I don't dare."
"." Cui Yunfeng was so angry she could barely breathe. "Can you stop bullying me? I'm already pitiful enough."
Cui Yunchu blinked. "How are you pitiful? The family is clearly doing this for your own good. With your brain, if you married Prince An, he'd sweet-talk you into a dizzy stupor."
Cui Yunfeng choked with anger. "Can't it just be that I naturally love spinning in circles?"
This time it was Cui Yunchu's turn to be speechless. She stared straight at Cui Yunfeng and, after a long moment, gave her a thumbs-up.
"You're quite something."
Cui Yunfeng scoffed lightly, crossing her arms and staying silent.
Cui Yunchu's gaze, however, roamed back and forth across her dressing table. "I saw your dowry list at Grandmother's."
Cui Yunfeng froze.
She then saw Cui Yunchu gesturing with her hands as she spoke, "It's so long, it's enough to buy my life."
"What nonsense. The lives of the Cui family daughters are precious. Can they be bought with gold and silver jewelry?" Cui Yunfeng furrowed her brows tightly.
Cui Yunchu lowered her eyelids. "Mine can."
Cui Yunfeng, "..."
Cui Yunchu smiled. "We've lived together for years. It's not like you don't know what kind of person I am. What I love most is gold and silver jewelry."
It was true. Her eldest sister had always been someone who could bend and stretch for power and wealth, stopping at nothing.
Cui Yunfeng said, "Grandmother has always treated us equally. Whatever I have, you will have too when the time comes."
Cui Yunfeng sounded like she was losing her strength to speak.
"Eldest Sister, you should go back. I was already feeling terrible hearing about Grandmother arranging my dowry list, and now I have to find the time to comfort you."
If they weren't blood sisters, Cui Yunfeng would have been tempted to curse her out.
Cui Yunchu sighed. "How can your man be as important as my gold and silver jewelry? I'm not leaving. If I go back, I'll die of sadness."
"..." Being pestered by Cui Yunchu like this, the gloom that had been stifling Cui Yunfeng's heart for two days slowly dissipated quite a bit. She grabbed a soft pillow from the side to muffle Cui Yunchu's mouth.
Cui Yunchu quickly dodged with a laugh.
Cui Yunfeng's eyes grew slightly red. "Eldest Sister, thank you for coming to comfort me."
Cui Yunchu smiled, affectionately raising her hand to stroke Cui Yunfeng's head. "No need to thank me. I genuinely came to collect the jewelry."
"."
Cui Yunfeng waved her hands wildly. "Take it, take it, take it all! It's just a bunch of broken jewelry, what's so rare about it?"
Cui Yunchu, however, fell silent, pressing her lips together as she looked at Cui Yunfeng.
"What's wrong?" She hadn't hit her anywhere else. Cui Yunfeng immediately sat up straight, grabbing Cui Yunchu's hand to ask.
"You hurt me," Cui Yunchu said.
"Jewelry might be broken trash in your eyes, but my concubine mother only left me a chest of tattered books, and they got locked away because you tattled to Father. Sigh..."
They say that parents who love their children plan far ahead for them. Cui Yunfeng's mother undoubtedly loved her, but what about her concubine mother?
Was it because she was shallow and didn't understand the rules and intricacies of a large estate that she raised her to be the way she was?
Yet in her memory, why was it always scenes of her gritting her teeth, ordering her to earn a noble title for her, to marry into the royal family, and to make her stand out? Not once did she hold her hand and earnestly wish for her to be safe and happy.
Even at the very end, when she gripped her hand tightly, it was to tell her to fight for success.
Her eyes were filled with a pure, unadulterated craving for glory and wealth, without a single trace of anything else.
"Eldest Sister." Cui Yunfeng's face was full of heartache. "I'm sorry, I said the wrong thing."
With tears in her eyes, Cui Yunchu looked up. "Then can you give me half of your dowry?"
"..." Cui Yunfeng instantly let go of her hand and kicked her leg toward her. "Your acting is getting more and more masterful."
The two sisters laughed and tumbled together.
Once they had laughed and played enough, Cui Yunfeng smoothed the stray hairs on her forehead and asked, her breathing slightly ragged, "How did things go yesterday? Have you salvaged your reputation?"
Cui Yunchu leaned against her pink soft pillow and nodded. "The Crown Prince and Prince An are prominent figures. With their people personally dispelling the rumors, it naturally yielded twice the result with half the effort."
"It's just... my people went to listen, and the acting of the staff from those two estates wasn't very good. They seemed reluctant when they spoke and lacked conviction."
Otherwise, the effect would definitely have been better.
"Maybe they were afraid of being struck by lightning."
Was that dispelling rumors? It was clearly lying through their teeth.
"..." Cui Yunchu turned her head to glare at her. "Add a pure gold dangling hairpin to the debt."
"Can it be something other than gold?"
"No, anything else isn't worth as much."
"..." Cui Yunfeng, "Oh."
"By the way, what books did you read when you were first being educated as a child?"
Cui Yunfeng was taken aback. "Why do you ask?"
"I need to salvage my reputation, so naturally I have to learn some rules and etiquette, as well as the teachings of the sages. Although it's impossible to read them all, I can at least learn a few superficial phrases to put on an act outside."
All the playful laughter vanished from Cui Yunfeng's face. "Did... did she never teach you?"
"Teach me what?" Cui Yunchu lazily lifted her eyelids. "What does she even know?"
"The books I read during my early education are different from what you read."
What she read was all about how women should be as soft as water, how to be charming, and how to win a man's favor. The Four Books and Five Classics, the Book of Rites—she had never even heard of them.
How could a girl who came out of a brothel know how the daughters of prominent families should be raised?
Perhaps she thought that teaching her to bend and stretch, to flatter and cater to others, and to be charmingly seductive was the absolute best she could do.
Cui Yunfeng pressed her lips together, speechless for a long time.
In the past, she always felt that Grandmother was biased, taking extra care of Cui Yunchu, whether it was in her daily life, or with dresses and jewelry.
Grandmother often said that her Eldest Sister had suffered grievances when she was young.
She used to feel resentful in her heart, but now she felt that Grandmother's compensations were still not enough.
"I have many sets of jewelry in my cabinet that my mother left for me. I'll let you pick some later."
Cui Yunchu replied, "Don't pity me, I don't need sympathy."
