VanillaLemon

The Jade Uncarved

As you walked hand in hand beneath the begonia trees, his height—so much greater than yours—caused the jade pendant at his waist to brush against your bangle, producing a crisp but never jarring chime. That was why you preferred to walk on his right side, blowing away the petals that landed in your right hand. The time you spent with him was among the few moments when you did not have to wonder whether someone was trying to murder you.

“Big brother Qiu, why don't you ever try to kill me like all the other brothers and sisters do?”

Such words might seem startling coming from a child, but in Daguanyuan they were commonplace—if anything, perhaps a little too blunt. Most people maintained a peace that was precarious on the surface. Yet once doors were closed, they would stop at nothing to eliminate their rivals.

At not yet thirteen, he had not reached the age when boys shot upward like bamboo, yet there was already in his face the habitual caution of someone forever calculating. His answer came without hesitation, as though the reason were self-evident, branded firmly into his mind. “Because you and I are betrothed.” Whether it was the hands now clasped together, or the privilege of entering each other’s residences without announcement, everything was given its proper name by that fact.

But that was not enough to satisfy a child's curiosity. In your mind, no such unfamiliar concept yet existed.

“What does being betrothed mean?”

Kong Qiu was, unusually, at a loss for words. He had never lost to anyone his age in verbal debate, but asking him to explain to an innocent child what it meant to be husband and wife was another matter entirely.

“Hm… it means I'll keep walking with you like this, and I'll keep protecting you. Always.”

It sounded like the sort of promise made to placate a child, yet you only tightened your grip around his fingers and smiled at the future it described. Perhaps, in that moment, even he briefly believed in that innocent explanation. Though in Hongyuan everything was so weightless that even the very idea of home could be torn up with ease.

“That sounds wonderful! I like being with big brother Qiu!”

Then he would smile. No one could remain entirely unmoved before such guileless affection. If you fussed and demanded to be carried, he would lift you onto his shoulders without complaint and let you play with the long black hair bound high behind his head.

…On ordinary days, so long as you did not think of it, life simply went on. How to claim the allegiance of a Heishou Pack. How to win Yuanchun's equivocal support. How to gain a little more leverage in H Corp.'s affairs. And the truth behind what had happened so many years ago—each of these, once you threw yourself into it, left no thought to spare for someone absent. But once you did think of him, there was no stopping. It all seemed to happen long times ago. Memory fitting against reality with edges so sharp that it felt like another life entirely. And yet that gentle expression still lingered before your eyes.

After he left, you had once considered removing every begonia tree in Qiushuangzhai. Modified with a little genetic technology, the trees bore wide, snow-white blossoms all year round, so there was no need to grieve those battered down by rain. Begonias that should live only in spring remained through every season—did that mean spring, too, could last all year? But spring had ended long ago.

You never really gave the order. Without them, the courtyard would be empty and bleak. That was the excuse.

-

Could stars weep? As a child, you once looked up at the sky and mistook the curtain of rain falling beyond the eaves for tears. Kong Qiu, seated across from you, frowned slightly and set his teacup back on the low table. Looking back now, perhaps he simply could not bear to tell you the truth. Hongyuan's sky was an artificial dome. Those who lived in Daguanyuan could go their entire lives without seeing a single star. Like most of the splendid yet lifeless scenery within it, to entrust your feelings to such a thing was little more than self-deception.

Throughout all of H Corp., there was only one place from which the true sky could be seen: the Qintianjian (钦天监), built for observing the stars at night. Only employees who lived in habitual silence, devoting themselves solely to calculating fortune and calamity, were permitted to enter. It was said that on the day Kong Qiu was born, the Big Dipper circled Ziwei Star at the narrowest angle seen in a century, bringing the Tiangang Star closest to it. Everyone took this as an auspicious omen, and the child born of the Kong and Jia families became an even greater target for his peers.

Your betrothal came from this. Seven years later, when you were born, the exact opposite occurred—the day the Tiangang Star stood farthest from Ziwei. The so-called match made by stars was meant to cancel the baleful clash written into your fates; behind it, of course, lay the private calculations of both families.

The blue-patterned jadeite bangle with its gold-filigree resplendent phoenix—an exquisitely wrought and lavish piece—had been on your left wrist for as long as you could remember. It was said to employ P Corp.'s Singularity. Even as you grew up, the bangle always left roughly one inches of space beyond your wrist. It never felt constricting, yet it could not be removed, the cool jade branded against your skin like a seal.

It was said that this bangle and the gold-threaded Qilin jade pendant at Kong Qiu’s waist had both been carved from the same piece of jadeite: two hearts combine into one, the finest blessing one could wish upon a pair. So you loved to run your palm over the smooth surface of the bangle, and with the years it only grew warmer and more translucent, the pale wisps within the jade spreading like diluted ink dropped into water.

Kong Qiu first saw you when the pair of jade pieces was delivered. You were a newborn then, eyes closed, crying softly. To his surprise, when he curiously brought a finger close, you caught it. Around the two of you, adults with unreadable faces traded hollow words of congratulation. He alone lowered his head and truly looked at you.

“She is so little. Does she even know whether she is willing or not?”

No one heard those words except you—or perhaps no one else wished to hear them.

He understood very early that this was both a gift and a mockery. A resplendent phoenix and a Qilin were noble and auspicious creatures, yes, but they would forever fall one step short of dragon and phoenix: simply because you were not Lady Wang's child, simply because neither the Kong nor the Jia family could ever fully trust him. And so he never showed his own preference. He only allowed you but no one else to touch the jade pendant fastened to his belt.

Sometimes you wondered, had he long since thrown that thing away?

-

Hope died down year after year because of his silence. Of course, you had grieved for his family and worried over him; for some time, you did not even know whether he was alive. He would not send so much as a single word. At last, you understood: he hated you—or, more precisely, he hated the Jia family, the surname that had been taken from him, this Daguanyuan where there were only killing and being killed. And so the grove and lakeside, where two children had once promised to walk together, became steeped in hatred, every leaf and every rustle alike.

He would not return. Jia Zheng regarded you more seriously than before, and Grandmother often summoned you to her residence for instruction. People said Third Miss was Jia Mu's most favored granddaughter. Lessons in taking over certain affairs of Daguanyuan, and in the etiquette of a household, continued much as they had before. The only person in Daguanyuan who dared to mention that marriage in front of you was Jia Mu herself. Her aged hands would close around the wrist that wore the jade bangle; though she scarcely seemed to exert any force, you could not pull free. And though her tone was so kindly, it offered no warmth.

“Dear child, the Kong family is a house of criminals. Though Jia Qiu has now returned to the Jia family, he remains a surviving remnant of that condemned house; surely he has long hated us to the marrow. How could a man alone and without backing ever be worthy of your eye again? Grandmother would never allow anyone to think low of you.”

After years against your skin, the jade had grown smooth and warm, familiar as another bone born at your wrist. You lowered your gaze. Whenever that lavish bangle—once a token of betrothal—showed, others either looked away or whispered among themselves.

Even then… you had not yet thought of taking it off.

-

The Family Hierarch Evaluation was approaching, and yet Jia Qiu had appeared in the Backstreets together with Shi Yihua… The name made your fingers tighten around the teacup before you set it lightly on the table, where a maid carefully took it away. In all these years, there were only two names no one dared to mention before you: Jia Qiu and this young master of the Shi family. Though probably no one but you knew why. As for Shi Yihua himself? That moron had likely forgotten the whole incident long ago. A couple of years back he had even tried to curry favor with you.

“So after all these years he finally comes back… Not a single word for me, yet he can tolerate that noisy fool at his side?”

No one answered. Neither the attendants who had followed you since childhood, nor the Heishou standing at attention in the shadows made a sound. They understood that the question is not for anyone here.

The Shi family probably had no idea what sort of grudge they had earned from you. No matter how painstakingly you maneuvered among the four great families over these years, you always found some way to skirt around them. You would rather travel all the way to Q Corp. to seek support from your half-sister Jia Yuanchun than spend a moment more than necessary in the Shi family's residence.

It had only been a child's thoughtless taunt; that was precisely what made it so pure in its bluntness, and so cruel. It bypassed every rule adults did not dare voice and placed the humiliation directly before you. Shi Yihua was several years younger than you, yet already parroting grown-ups: that you were only “a young lady born of a concubine,” that you would end up despised just like your birth mother, that being tied to the Kong family made you “ill-omened.” What he had actually said was uglier still, but that part of the memory was quickly washed away by the blood rushing into your head.

Words like these never reached your ears before, which was why you stood behind them and listened for quite some time. At the third mention of your mother, you gave a cold laugh and seized Shi Yihua by the shoulder.

“Is that really all you can come up with?”

At the sound of that, the two of you alone fell into a brawl. Never before had you so completely cast aside decorum as to grab someone by the hair and beat them. Siblings maiming one another might be common in Daguanyuan, but no one did it openly in daylight. Servants and the young master's playmates stared, dumbfounded, as you grappled with each other in the most primitive, brutal way. Only when his cheeks were slick with blood and several scratches had been raked across your own face did the boy finally sob and beg you to let him go.

With your face smeared in blood—yours and your enemy's—you silently shoved past the panicked attendants and returned to your room in Qiushuangzhai. You squeezed a careless dollop of hand cream over the back of your hand, seized the jade bangle, and dragged at it toward your fingers. You pulled until your whole hand was streaked scarlet from the friction, until your face flushed red from gritting your teeth and straining; no amount of pain could force the bangle off your hand.

Blood from the scratches on your face ran down to your chin. As if you had gone numb to pain, you touched the wounds. They were shallow; a little treatment and two days would erase them.

Blood dripped onto the jade.

You understood then. There was only one way to remove the bangle: smash it completely. Destroy it. And once you did, the gold-threaded phoenix coiling around it could never be restored to its original form.

He would not return. Jia Qiu, your father, your grandmother—none of them mattered. Only by proving that you, on your own, deserved the seat of Family Hierarch could you live in Daguanyuan with your head held high.

He would not return.

Thinking with perfect conviction, you prayed P Corp. had not applied its indestructible technology to this piece of jade as well. You did not care whether your wrist would be injured—or even shattered along with it. You raised the heavy paperweight and smashed it down with all your strength. The jade rang with a clear, sorrowful clash. Then a second blow. A third. Until at last it split into three pieces and fell to the floor, the fractured edges jagged enough to cut your palm.

You gathered the remains from the floor and walked outside.

The pond to the west was the closest body of water to Qiushuangzhai; every stream that ran through the residence emptied into that great pool, and in summer a cool breeze crossed its surface. Jia Qiu had once sat beside you there and watched you pluck a lotus from the pond full of blossoms. Back then he would inspect it carefully for any trace of poison, then keep such close watch that your younger self could not possibly tumble into the water…

You stood on the bank. The autumn wind had turned desolate, winter nearly at hand. The jadeite fragments slipped from your hand and met the surface with a soft plop before sinking. It was much quieter than you had imagined.

It sank—down into the waters of Daguanyuan.

-

No servants managed to find you for the entire following day. There was no sign of you near your own residence, nor in Yihongyuan or Nuanxiangwu. At dusk someone finally found you by the pond, hair and clothes soaked through with icy water, staring wordlessly at the surface.

The search lasted half the night, even after your father sent people to stop you from diving into the late-autumn water alongside the servants. In the end the broken bangle was found. It had sunk onto the root of a withered lotus nearest the bank, buried in the mud. Now it lay wrapped in pitch-black cloth and locked inside your study, never again to see the light of day.

-

As you had expected, none of your brothers or sisters except you attended the banquet held to welcome Xichun and Baoyu back to Hongyuan. Before everyone turned their blades to one another, you still wanted to see these two younger siblings. Tomorrow, everything would begin according to your plan. You had spent years preparing for it. No one would ever again dare speak to you the way Shi Yihua once had. Whether Jia Qiu returned or not, he would never again take from you the right to arrange your own life.

After paying his respects to Grandmother and his parents, Jia Baoyu came straight to you. Judging by his smile, he seemed to have something important to say—

“Oh~ According to my companions, they ran into big brother Qiu on the way back.”

Every person of Hongyuan present, Xichun included, fell into an uncanny silence. Xichun even gave the hem of his coat a sharp tug. Only Jia Baoyu could mention him in front of you with such complete lack of restraint. It was certainly not because he was poor at reading the atmosphere—quite the opposite. His eyes were far too clear, clear enough to sting at the feelings you were always trying to evade.

“Of course I already knew that.”

You swallowed the urge to make some sarcastic remark and lowered your head for a few sips of water.

“Big brother Qiu still seems to be wearing that Qilin jade pendant,” he went on, once again innocently touching another topic forbidden among the servants. “Xichun, that's right, isn't it? The only bright color on him from head to toe. Shame he never mentioned you, sister—”

This time Xichun stamped hard on his foot. The look she shot her elder brother all but said, Don't drag me into this too, which made you smile despite yourself. If only this family's pleasantries did not have to revolve around a certain someone…

Yet of your passing let me not complain: Next autumn equinox we'll meet again.

The man who had once so easily taken everything away would just as easily return to the game; but you would not—could not—be shaken by him again. Never.