Ten Thousand Books, But Only One You

Extra Story: Strange Happenings on One's Wedding Night in Great Ming (Part 2)

Part Two:

Sitting in front of her dresser, Su Rulan removed the exquisite jewellery from her ears, neck and wrists at a swift and precise pace. Xiaowei extracted the accessories from her mistress's hair carefully with the same swiftness and precision. With all hindrance gone, Su Rulan stood up and rushed out of the room. As she had expected, there were no attendants from the Ji family in the area. With Xiaowei going before her, acting as scout and rewarding their informants with silver nuggets, they soon found their way to a Ji family's horse carriage.

"Please take me to the side residence, urgently." Su Rulan gave the coachman a silver nugget. With a wordless smile, the coachman accepted the bribe and told her to hop on.

"My lady, what about me?" asked Xiaowei, who had not managed to get on when the carriage had already started moving.

"Return to the bridal chamber. When someone asks where we've gone, tell them that a man named 'Han Dong' disrupted us and had said that the side residence required urgent attention. After that both of us went to the side residence. Got it?"

Nodding, Xiaowei clutched her hands to her chests and watched nervously as the carriage left through the gates.

"Shifu." Su Rulan raised the cloth covering the door of the carriage and observed the streets that they are travelling through. "I've grown up in this city my whole life and have known about the Ji household since I was a child; but why haven't I heard of this side residence before? Are there people staying there?"

"Replying to the young madam: this old man has ferried multiple people to and fro the main and side residences before, but have never set foot in the side residence. I've only heard that the side residence is much larger than the main one and there is a very beautiful garden inside. Such a large place—I guess that there should be people living there."

"Thank you," she said, before dropping the curtain and leaning back against the vibrating carriage walls. Su Rulan glanced down at her heavy wedding robes and sighed—what was she doing right now?

No, she should not doubt herself. What she was going to do what to inspect the truth with her own eyes. Ji Chiyan had written in one of his letters that one should satisfy oneself of the fact of the matter and not simply reach a conclusion just by suspicion or hearsay. And if anyone should question her later about lacking trust in her own husband, certainly she would retort that their wedding rites had been left incomplete—so, what husband? Or simply, she could show them her cinnabar mole.

But in this society, what did trust and faithfulness mean? When her married friends visited her a couple of years after their marriage, some of them confided in her the troubles that they faced with their spouses' concubines or mistresses or the courtesans from the city's famous Yanzilou. One of her best friends who had the good (ill) fortune of marrying a noble in the capital city even wrote back to her to lament that she discovered that her husband already had two illegitimate children who lived with their mother, who was a lowly courtesan, in a side residence. Since then, Su Rulan had become apprehensive of the words "side residence".

From Ji Chiyan's earlier behaviour, one could surmise that Su Rulan had found herself in the same position as her best friend. Perhaps, hearing that Young Master Ji was getting married today, his mistress (if any) decided to disturb the bridal chamber by sending word to the main residence that she or one of her children was deathly ill.

But even if she had no reason to trust Ji Chiyan right now, surely she could trust the Ji family as an institution. Ever since her engagement, she had heard nothing but praises of the Ji family men's faithfulness to their sole wives from the lips of family and friends. All the sons had been taught such principles since they were young. Surely Ji Chiyan was also groomed in the same fashion. But he had also been to the capital city before. Su Rulan had heard that the capital city was a place for chaotic and complicated relationships. Who knew if Ji Chiyan had been caught in such a web when he was studying and working there.