One afternoon, I was sitting on the porch embroidering shoes when Fang Yuan Yuan suddenly appeared in the courtyard.
She was wearing a thick pink winter cloak, looking playful and undeniably cute. She had deliberately slowed her footsteps to sneak up on me—but I heard her approach immediately.
I didn't know if it was just my imagination, but ever since marrying Shen Er, my own five senses seemed to have sharpened dramatically to compensate for his.
"Sister-in-law, your hands are so skillful." She reached out to touch the golden pigs embroidered onto my shoes, offering a bright smile.
I shyly pulled my hand back. I came from a desperately poor family, and as a result, I unapologetically loved money. That was why I so often embroidered golden ingots and fat golden pigs onto our daily clothing.
I personally didn't think there was anything wrong with it, but sitting in front of these educated, aristocratic people, I still felt a flare of deep, class-based uneasiness.
Unbidden, my mind drifted to Scholar Xu. He had always pretended to disdain my vulgar, money-grubbing tastes, but in the end, despite the relentless ridicule of his classmates, he had always stubbornly worn the golden pig shoes I embroidered for him.
My thoughts abruptly snapped back to the present. Realizing I had lost my composure for a moment, I quickly refocused my eyes on Fang Yuan Yuan.
Fang Yuan Yuan had sat down beside me and was intimately chattering away, telling me stories about Shen Er's childhood.
Stories like how, when she was barely a toddler, she had accidentally pushed Shen Er down a flight of stairs. Or how, a few years later, she had torn up Shen Er's practice copybooks and nearly been beaten half to death by him in furious retaliation.
I found the stories genuinely interesting—so Shen Er's childhood hadn't been quite as monotonous and isolated as he claimed.
Across the porch, the servant girl Xiao Luo stood rigidly, her expression cycling through several complicated changes as she listened to the guest.
Eventually finishing her stories, Fang Yuan Yuan tilted her head and asked with wide, innocent eyes, "Sister-in-law, we really are fated—even our names are the exact same. I wonder if Shen Er can even tell us apart?"
I looked at her, nodding seriously. "Of course he can tell us apart."
Fang Yuan Yuan was stunned into silence for a moment. Then, recovering her composure, she smiled meaningfully, stood up, and left the courtyard.
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