As long as she became a servant in the Imperial palace, she had to live there as a maid for the rest of her life.
If she wanted to stop being a maidservant, she had to pay a contract fee, but since it was a large sum of money that could only be obtained by working as a maidservant for ten years, it was practically impossible for her to quit.
The maidservants of the palace were not slaves who did not get paid, but Rachel was not very happy with the pay.
Most of the maids sent their hard-earned wages to their families. Then, when they got married, they would pay again for the rest of their lives for their new families.
Even so, not everyone could work as a servant in the imperial palace, so the servants lived contentedly with their lives.
However, it was questionable whether Rachel, who was only seven years old, was satisfied with the life she was about to live, a child who desperately needed the warmth of her parents.
Rachel may have been young, but she was as witty as anyone.
Like small animals that usually look around, the young and powerless Rachel always looked around.
She knew that her mother was having a hard time, that she was sighing all the time every day, and that her language towards little Rachel was becoming increasingly rough. She never forgot her mother's harsh words and expression.
"We don't have enough money.......... "
"Tsk, your clothes are already getting smaller."
"Are you still hungry?"
I could tell everything about her and how she looked when she talked like that.
Even though she was very young, Rachel did the best she could.
When her mother went to work, she cleaned the little house by herself, and when she was a little older, she even ate dinner while waiting for her mother.
She never begged her mother to buy her anything, and she always stayed quiet because she didn't want to bother her mother. Like her mother told her.
"If it wasn't for you, I didn't have to suffer like this!"
"What's wrong with my life......."
"You're useless!"
But even so, her mom got angry easily.The more she did, the smaller Rachel became, and she always watched out for her mood.
Then one day, her mother grabbed the young Rachel on the shoulders and delivered the cruel news. Rachel wanted to cry that day. For the first time in her life, she wanted to whine.
"You're going to live in the palace now. There will be more food, more clean clothes, more friends for you. Isn't that nice?"
Rachel knew that her mother would not be there, but she did not dare to say it. She bit her lip and held back the tears, as her mother did.
She wanted to tell her mother that she didn't need clean clothes and she would eat only a little, but little Rachel stayed quiet.
Maybe she was afraid that her mother would abandon her I'd she said too much, or maybe she just couldn't hold back her tears to speak, and the child just watched her mother leave like that.
As Rachel stared at her mother's back as she left, she knew she would never see her again, but she just bit her lip harder.
And so, at the age of seven, Rachel became the maid of the imperial palace.
