To Embers We Return — Chapter 8
***
Dusk gathered. As Shen Ni was finally about to leave the construction site and set off for home for the first time in days, she received a message from the Ministry of Households[1] — more specifically, from one of its departments, the Civil Affairs Bureau.[2] It was an invitation for her and her new wife to activate their ‘spousal module’.
Bian Jin had probably received the same invitation too.
The spousal module was a piece of software which most married couples in TangPro used. It had a whole suite of functions that let partners to share more of themselves with each other. Through the module, a user could feel exactly the same emotions as their spouse was going through, perceive the world through their spouse’s senses, enter their spouse’s dreams, experience their spouse’s desires in an even more direct and immediate fashion, and even relinquish control of their body to their spouse. Once a couple began using the spousal module, there would be few secrets between them.
The invention of the spousal module had made it much easier for the people of TangPro to determine exactly how compatible they really were with their spouses. Shen Ni had heard that couples who used it were liable to one of two extremes: either they stayed happily married for the rest of their lives, or they soon sought a quick divorce.
Given how things currently stood between them, Shen Ni reflected, Bian Jin probably wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the spousal module.
When Shen Ni finally arrived at her residence, the first person she saw was Bian Jin, standing in the front courtyard and speaking to two maids. The last rays of the setting sun lingered on Bian Jin’s profile. She no longer looked ill, but there was still a faint air of fragility that softened her demeanour somewhat, draping an unaccustomed aura of gentleness over the formidable shijie Shen Ni remembered
When they saw Shen Ni approach, the two maids bowed to Bian Jin and took their leave.
Shen Ni ran her eye over Bian Jin’s new clothes. The distinctive white robes, adorned with the design of a pale blue orchid on the back, were instantly recognisable as those worn by Lantai officials. There was a scholarly elegance to them which suited Bian Jin better than Shen Ni had expected. They brought out the delicacy of her beauty, highlighted her air of quiet intelligence, and accentuated her graceful, willowy figure. ‘Ah, these are your official robes for Lantai,’ she said.
On hearing Shen Ni’s voice, Bian Jin turned, and her eyes were drawn immediately to Shen Ni’s mouth. Shen Ni’s lips were a lustrous, velvety cherry-blossom pink. Against her clear, smooth skin and the backdrop of brilliant white snow, they looked very full and very soft.
Bian Jin felt as if she’d been burned — scorched — by the sight of her shimei’s almost too-flagrant beauty. With some difficulty, she shuffled sideways a little.
Shen Ni pushed her sunglasses up to her forehead and plucked them off. Her eyes were as dark and clear as if they’d been washed by the purest water; anyone could lose themselves in those depths.
Bian Jin suddenly wasn’t sure where to look. Most of her memories of Shen Ni were of a little girl who came only up to her waist — the little girl she had led by the hand across the peaks and valleys around Shuangji Hall. And now that little girl, who’d loved nothing more than to follow her everywhere she went, peppering her with demands for attention all the while, was as tall as she was.
‘The emperor has given me a post as archival clerk at Lantai,’ said Bian Jin. Her tone was calm and even, making it clear that she did not object to the appointment. She’d surmised that the emperor must have granted her the post at Shen Ni’s request, which was why she was mentioning it now — to let Shen Ni know that everything was in order.
To Shen Ni, however, it felt oddly domestic: here was her new wife, telling her all about the day she’d just had. The sensation was not at all unpleasant.
Shen Ni was indeed the one who’d obtained the post — which she did not expect to be onerous — for Bian Jin. ‘Having something to do outside the house will be good for your recovery,’ she explained. ‘Just remember not to over-stress yourself.’
‘Of course,’ said Bian Jin.
After this brief exchange with the shijie she had not seen for days, Shen Ni turned to leave.
‘Shimei,’ Bian Jin called out to her. ‘I’ve just received a message from the Ministry of Households, inviting us to activate something called a spousal module.’
Shen Ni paused and looked back over her shoulder at Bian Jin. So she had received the same invitation.
‘I’ve read the documentation carefully,’ said Bian Jin. ‘It seems the module is used by a majority of married couples in the empire. However, while some of the features might be useful to us, they also seem inimical to privacy.’
How very like her shijie, Shen Ni thought, to have read all sixty-six tedious pages of that technical manual — and to have read it carefully, at that.
‘There’s no hurry,’ said Shen Ni. ‘We’ll activate it only if and when you think it’s necessary.’
Shen Ni’s easy-going attitude put Bian Jin completely at ease, at least where the matter of the spousal module was concerned. She was just about to leave when a sudden sense of nausea surged up from her stomach. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly. After so many years as the highest military commander in the north, surrounded by threats at every turn, she’d become used to suppressing her reactions, maintaining a facade of perfect equanimity at all times. Even now, she managed to conceal all but the slightest trace of the discomfort she felt.
Shen Ni, however, had caught sight of that faint twitch of Bian Jin’s brows. She was about to ask Bian Jin if she was feeling unwell, but her shijie had started to walk away before she could get the words out. Reflexively, she put a hand out to stop Bian Jin — and the very next moment, she remembered Bian Jin’s aversion to dirt.
Although Shen Ni had taken care to wash and disinfect her hands right after stepping into the house, and had changed into a fresh set of outer robes as well, she was aware that that barely scratched the surface. She’d been running around all day, so she was sure the cold air of the construction site still clung to her, and she’d come into contact with so many strangers besides. All that was likely to trigger Bian Jin’s phobia. At the thought of that, Shen Ni drew back her half-outstretched hand just as Bian Jin brushed past her — and for the briefest of moments, her little finger just happened to hook itself around Bian Jin’s.
Neither of them was wearing gloves.
Bian Jin very rarely found herself coming into contact with another person’s bare skin. The momentary sensation of Shen Ni’s touch against the sensitive skin on the inside of her finger sent an almost unbearable electric current surging convulsively up to her heart.
‘Ah, how clumsy of me,’ said Shen Ni. ‘I wanted to ask if you were feeling unwell. Right now, I’ve only completed the first stage of the repairs I need to make to your body, and you still need to be kept under observation. If there’s anything that doesn’t feel right, please let me know as promptly as possible.’
Bian Jin, keeping her expression unruffled, folded her hands together to hide the faint pink flush that had risen in her palms. ‘It’s nothing. I had my midday meal at Lantai and the food didn’t quite agree with me, that’s all.’
Shen Ni knew Bian Jin well enough to understand what this was about. Bian Jin and always had a delicate digestion, and preferred fresh, lightly-seasoned foods that had been cooked in as little oil as possible. During their days at Shuangji Hall, Auntie Wan’s cooking had been the only thing she could stomach without any discomfort; any meals she took outside would inevitably leave her feeling queasy. Bian Jin had probably overcome it through sheer force of will during the years when she’d been on campaign in the north, Shen Ni thought. But after all the injuries she’d sustained, the old complaint had reared its head again.
‘That explains it,’ said Shen Ni.
Bian Jin was rather uncomfortable at having brought up such a minor matter. It made her feel a little as if she were some spoiled child, whining to Shen Ni in hopes of being petted and soothed.
The two of them went their separate ways towards different parts of their house. Shen Ni made straight for her workshop, which the servants had tidied up. She was in the middle of testing out a new mechanical arm when Auntie Wan knocked on the door. ‘Dinner is ready, my lord.’
Shen Ni paused, her thoughts going back to Bian Jin. After that first day, her shijie had not called her by her milk name ‘A-Yao’ again — certainly not while she’d been fully conscious and in possession of all her faculties. Bian Jin still held some antipathy towards her for everything that had happened all those years ago, it seemed. Even though I was the one who got flogged, and I haven’t said anything, Shen Ni groused inwardly.
Still, Bian Jin had eaten poorly at Lantai earlier that day, and if she had to have dinner while looking across the table at Shen Ni’s face the whole time — no doubt an unedifying sight for her — it would probably bring on her indigestion again.
‘Tell shijie to eat first, and not to wait for me,’ Shen Ni told Auntie Wan.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Auntie Wan. As she turned back towards the kitchens, she found herself musing on the fact that, although Marquess Jing’an and Mistress Bian were already a lawfully wedded couple, they still addressed each other as ‘shijie’ and ‘shimei’. What odd proclivity was this? she wondered.
As Bian Jin sat alone in the dining room with an array of dishes spread out before her, Auntie Wan came in and gave her Shen Ni’s message.
‘I understand,’ said Bian Jin with a smile, and Auntie Wan bowed and left. Bian Jin did not start eating, however. She decided to wait for Shen Ni a little longer, thinking perhaps that her shimei would come to dinner soon, after she’d finished whatever she was busy with.
Bian Jin’s long years of service to her sect and more latterly in the empire’s military had ingrained in her the habit of never wasting time, even those fragmented scraps of it that subsisted between one task and the next. Over the last while, she’d made it a point of trying to break through the block on her memory module at least once a day, to see if she could retrieve any of her memories from the last three years. She decided to make another attempt while waiting for her shimei.
Scattered, jumbled fragments of memory stabbed viciously into her mind, making her lips compress in pain. A quarter of an hour later, she’d made no progress on overcoming the block. She opened her eyes, extricating her consciousness from her memory module, and found that her forehead was beaded with cold sweat. Luckily she was already inured to pain; compared to all else she’d become accustomed to, this was practically nothing.
Bian Jin reminded herself that she shouldn’t be impatient, otherwise she risked doing fresh damage to those parts of her memory module that had already been repaired by her shimei, and that would be doubly a loss. She decided she would look into everything of note that had happened in Yanluo over the last three years, be it big or small. Perhaps that would jog her memory.
Bian Jin waited for a little longer, but Shen Ni still didn’t turn up. She realised then that Shen Ni was not coming.
Taking up her chopsticks, Bian Jin began to eat. The fresh, lightly-seasoned vegetables slowly soothed her queasy stomach. Then her chopsticks slowed as she recalled what Shen Ni had told her on their wedding night: ‘Since we parted, I’ve had a few lovers.’
A faint line formed between her brows. Did her shimei have a lover at the time they were commanded to wed? And if so, had the marriage put a strain on their relationship?
***
To avoid the charge of dishonouring the emperor’s will, the wives were compelled to share the same bedchamber. Tonight, however, they continued sleeping in their separate spots — Shen Ni on the floor and Bian Jin on the bed.
They said nothing to each other all night.
Since Shen Ni didn’t have to attend court the next morning, and Li Ruoyuan had yet to grant her access to the Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation, she decided to take to heart Li Ruoyuan’s assurance that her duties were not intended to be too onerous. She meant to have a long, leisurely lie-in before before leaving for the Ministry of Works.
Bian Jin, meanwhile, rose early to start her shift at Lantai. As she got out of bed, she saw that Shen Ni was cuddling a plump, bright yellow plush toy in her arms.
Bian Jin looked away, then looked back again. Shen Ni was grown up now, and she no longer looked the same as she’d done at sixteen, but she still had the same old childhood habit — she needed to cuddle something in her arms before she could fall asleep. When she was little, that had been Bian Jin; now, it seemed, it was this plush toy.
Bian Jin averted her gaze from Shen Ni a final time, draped her outer robes over her shoulders, and went to wash up. Then she set off for Lantai.
As a new official at Lantai, Bian Jin’s position was rather awkward. She was only a lowly clerk, but her infamy had preceded her. Her superiors barely looked her in the eye, and her peers avoided her most assiduously. Bian Jin did not mind; she the peace and quiet suited her.
During their midday rest break, when all of her colleagues had gone to the refectory, Bian Jin stayed behind at her desk. The greasy, fried dishes served up by the refectory were not to her taste. Besides, now that no one else was around, she had the opportunity to take care of a few personal matters.
Bian Jin switched on her digital watch and used it to project a semi-transparent virtual keyboard onto her desk. The digital watches and other wearable devices that swept through Chang’an in a seemingly endless frenzy were all new and unfamiliar to her, but there was a place she knew better than anyone else.
Using a very particular series of steps, Bian Jin logged on to the dark web. She had an extremely high-level account there, through which she’d purchased a great deal of military equipment and unusual killing devices. In the past, Li Ruoyuan had rewarded her generously for her military accomplishments, and she’d had her fair share of the spoils from the battlefields she’d triumphed over. With all these riches, she could afford to spend extravagantly. If she saw something she wanted on the dark web, she was prepared to offer an outrageously high price, and that had caught the attention of sellers. Many of them would offer her the first pick of any rare items they had acquired before listing them on the dark web. The account was pseudonymous, of course; no one knew it belonged to Bian Jin.
Bian Jin scanned through the latest offerings on the dark web, but saw no sign of her bone whip. The whip had been her weapon of choice for the last ten years, and it had been upgraded no fewer than six times over that period. Its power had increased exponentially each time, and in her hands, it was an almost irresistible force.
She had always kept the whip coiled tightly around her waist, and it never left her person. When she woke up in the Court of Judicature and Revision’s prison with no memory of what had happened in the last three years, however, the whip had vanished, along with all of her personal possessions.
Bian Jin knew the dark web well enough to be certain that, if someone had come across her bone whip out in the wild, they would have listed it there and auctioned it off for an astronomical price. If that was the case, there would be some record of the auction on there, and her account’s high-level privileges would enable her to track it down. If she could find some clue as to her whip’s whereabouts, that might take her one step closer to solving the mystery of her lost memories.
Even after Bian Jin had scoured the dark web thoroughly, however, she could still find no sign of her bone whip, nor any trace of a possible auction. By then, her colleagues were beginning to drift back into the room, so Bian Jin logged off the dark web and on to a major shopping website, intending to buy herself a weapon she could use for the time being.
As she looked through the listings, she couldn’t help thinking that the price of goods had risen wildly over the last few years. All the whips she considered to be of tolerable quality cost as much as five hundred taels[3] of silver each. That was expensive, but luckily her personal bank account had now been unfrozen, and she still had some tens of thousands of taels in there which she could spend.
Bian Jin was just about to complete her purchase when she overheard one nearby colleague grumbling to another. ‘That accursed husband of mine! Do you know what he’s gone and done now? He’s bought another horse. Another horse, when we already have four at home! If it had been just a small thing, something inexpensive, I could have let it go. But this horse cost us a full three hundred taels of silver! Doesn’t he know that now we’re married, we hold all our property in common? All his money is my money too! Why didn’t he tell me that he was planning on spending so much of our money?’
Bian Jin, who had been about to click on the ‘pay’ button, paused. Here was another thing she needed to think about. Now that she and Shen Ni were married, her money belonged to Shen Ni as well. Since they owned everything in common, she should probably let Shen Ni know that she was planning to make such a big purchase.
She took a screenshot of the listing for the whip she had chosen and sent it to Shen Ni via Messenger Pigeon, adding, ‘I’d like to buy this.’
Back at home, Shen Ni had just woken up. She wasn’t expecting to get a message from Bian Jin, and she certainly wasn’t expecting the message to be a request for a little present. The corners of her mouth began curving upwards in a smile.
Buzz.
Shen Ni had replied. Bian Jin opened the message.
Buy it, Shen Ni urged. Then came a notification that Shen Ni had transferred five hundred taels of silver to her.
Bian Jin stared at the message, puzzled.
***
Author’s Note:
Fake Married Wives Talking to Each Other at Cross-Purposes: the Series
&
Why Yes, I Do Want to Get Up Close and Personal with My Aloof, Distant, Mysophobic Shijie (v 1.0)
***
Footnotes:
- In the original text, 户部 (pinyin: hu bu). One of the Six Ministries which formed part of the primary administrative structure of imperial China, the Ministry of Households was responsible for gathering household census data, collecting taxes and handling state revenues. Also sometimes translated as ‘Ministry of Revenue’ or ‘Ministry of Finance’. [return to text]
- In the original text, 民政司 (pinyin: minzheng si). Likely the fictionalised historical equivalent of the present-day Ministry of Civil Affairs, which is responsible for the registration and oversight of social organisations and private non-enterprise entities; the formulation of disaster response policies and coordination of relief efforts; the development and implementation of social welfare policies and subsidies; and the development and implementation of policies related to marriages and deaths. [return to text]
- In the original text, 两 (pinyin: liang). A Chinese unit of weight that, when applied to silver, was historically used as a unit of currency. In general, a silver tael weighed around 40 grams, or 1.3 ounces. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 