Crocodile Tears

Ch. 4: No More Running

At that moment, everything came crashing down. I no longer cared if they were going to hear me. If what they were saying was true, then my entire life stemmed from a lie. Without knowing, I had been laughing, a hollow sound mocking me as it forced its way through my body.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them back. What was there to weep for? This story was the funniest I have ever heard in my life, the most impractical joke.

If I had left without ever hearing these words, then perhaps I could have passed into my next life thinking I made a noble sacrifice. But now— No, I was going to live. No more guilt. No more compliance. I wasn't going to watch silently anymore as people nor fate decided my future for me.

I pushed open the door, the last standing barrier between the past me and me.

"I heard you." This time, my voice didn't waver. "Tell me, who are my parents?"

They exchanged glances with one another, obviously shocked that I would barge in.

"Well, we were speaking of the marriage alliance with the North," my uncle replied while dodging eye contact.

"Tell me who my parents are." This time, I made sure that it was a statement and not a question.

The air was still.

My aunt and uncle opened their mouths, hesitated, then pursed their lips again.

An eternity seemed to pass.

"Your father is the current emperor of Liang, and your mother is my sister, Empress Zhang." He slumped back into his chair, as if saying those words consumed all of his strength.

Though I was the one who pressed for an answer, when he finally told me the truth, my mind went blank.

"YouShi, don't ever tell anyone of this. They wanted you to enjoy a normal life and not be confined to the palace," my aunt looked like she was on the verge of fainting, clutching to the edge of the table to help stabilize herself.

I nodded slowly, not knowing anymore whether I was even in control of my body. "In all fifteen years, they never bothered to come check if I was dead or alive? And who was the Lord of DongPing then? Someone invented to make me feel like a curse my entire life?"

All of my past blurred together and exploded. More than any time before, I wanted to be completely selfish and block out their sides of the story. My whole life, I've tried to fulfill expectations and help others, but now, I was going to see only myself.

"You should have grown up in the palace where you were a carefully polished pearl, but instead you had to learn all the hardships of living. Cooking, sewing, cleaning, you should have never had to do any of that. We..." Her phrases came in bursts of hiccups as she struggled for air. "But they love you just as we do. If you weren't born in the second month... "

She scrambled for the dresser and pulled out a box, nearing tripping as she handed me the plain wooden chest.

"Open it," she urged, lightly patting my back. Sensing her familiar touch, I instead flinched. They were the ones I trusted the most, yet they knew about this all along and kept me in the dark.

Thinking back now, I shouldn't have been so harsh with them. They had treated me with nothing but kindness, and they weren't the ones who had abandoned me as a child. But the shock came before all, engulfing whatever sense of morality and goodness I had in me.

I ran my fingers over the top, took a deep breath, and opened the lid. In it were countless frayed letters all signed off by the name of "sister."

I picked a random one and began reading.

"Dear Brother, you last said that YouShi had been losing her baby teeth. Make sure not to let her eat anything hard, especially those red bean pastries she likes..."

The ink was fading, and the paper was yellow. It was so fragile, easily crumpled or burned in just seconds. I wanted to throw the chest on the ground, but my eyes were glued to the letters. They suddenly became my last hope in the world, the only things I could cling onto that made me seem wanted.

"Dear Brother, sorry for not writing soon, but it has been a rough time here at court. The North wants us to support them in their conquests, but the famine has killed thousands of our citizens already and made us even weaker. Are you unaffected and well? It has been more than ten years since you last visited. Next time, you should take YouShi with you. I'll be content watching her from a distance..."

Moments earlier, I wanted to direct all my hate towards these parents that abandoned me. Yet these letters made it so hard for me to do so. How I wanted to have at least someone to blame and curse, but we were all suffering in this play of fate. I thought I could pretend to not see their hardships, but as much as I wished I could, I couldn't bring myself to hate these two strangers.

The more I read, the more—

A loud neigh accompanied by brisk knocks on the front door jerked all three of us back to reality. "It's me! Hurry!"

My uncle must have known the voice because he wasted no time tidying or hiding the letters and immediately ran to the door.

A young man stood by the entrance, dressed in the robes of the imperial court. He walked briskly inside, hastily closing the door behind him. "Tell her to pack her things and leave. Before tomorrow morning, she has to be gone."

Then he saw me sitting in their bedroom. His eyes widened to see me still up and even more so to see the letters sprawled before me. "How much does she know?"

"All of it," I responded for my uncle, seeing he was reluctant to speak.

"The empress will not be happy about this!" the man hissed. "Forget all of this and go before it's too late... Princess."

The title was alien to me. This day had taken yet another turn, throwing me even more off-guard.

"The court has decided to wed you to the North to preserve our kingdom's peace and independence. The Sui officials will be here by dawn, so take the necessities and run away as fast as you can! Empress has already found a double for you, and she'll be given away instead."

My aunt's face turned to ghostly white. "The prophecy..." she muttered. "YouShi, what are you doing still standing there? Go!" She pushed me towards my room.

"They're a barbaric land. The current emperor seized the throne from his own grandson!" my uncle rushed over and shook me. "The palace is a cage of bone, hardly a place for someone as kindhearted as you. You've always wanted to pursue medicine, so go! Run towards the South and open a clinic!"

In just the span of one day, my world had flipped itself upside down. Looking back, my dreams of becoming a medic seemed so far away, almost like they were my mere imaginations from another lifetime.

My whole life had been written out for me as if a script. There would be no more running. This time, I chose to write my own fate, even if the unknown spelled certain death.

"I'm staying."