Striking the Errant Chord
Synopsis
Song Hemei and Young Master Shao were betrothed in childhood. When the time came, she naturally boarded the Shao family's bridal sedan. She had thought that childhood sweethearts would make for a fine young couple and a good marriage. It never crossed her mind that the moment the nuptial wine slid down her throat, his bed servant would appear before her, belly swollen, demanding a proper title.
The child in that servant's womb was already five months along, but at the time, he was still in deep mourning for a parent. While she worried he might be sunk in grief over his grandfather's passing, he was tangled in crimson silks with his servant girl.
Song Hemei raised a furious scene and resolutely returned home. But her parents and elder brother, who had always doted on her, now spoke the very same words as her young Master Shao:
"A man simply learns a skill. A lowly bed servant is nothing to take to heart."
Learn a skill, was it?
Very well. She too would find a lowly man and thoroughly learn a skill of her own.
She set her sights on her youngest brother's study companion.
Yu Yeqing had lost both parents and was a commoner without any status. She gave him silver, forcing him to submit and let her vent. In secret, she committed every act of defiance and impropriety.
She thought she would remain entangled with him in this gray, unseemly state for the rest of her life, but she never expected him to suddenly leave without a word.
When they met again, three years had passed.
The Song family had fallen into ruin. In the end, she was still trapped in the mire of the Shao residence, merely scraping by. Yet Yu Yeqing was now dressed in splendid robes, all traces of his former poverty and restraint long gone.
Song Hemei remembered the humiliation she had once heaped upon him and braced herself as if facing a great enemy. She never imagined that at a banquet honoring the grand coordinator, while her husband fawned and flattered, this lofty, coldly remote grand coordinator would hook her skirt with his foot beneath the round table.
Yu Yeqing believed that he could only ever wait in some dark corner for Song Hemei's gaze to fall upon him, even if only for a moment. Until heaven took pity and allowed her to choose him. He knew it was wrong, yet he still plunged in like a moth to a flame, until he was seized by her elder brother. Her brother told him that she was returning to the Shao family to mend the broken mirror, and that he was a burdensome stain on her reputation.
Later, he was left covered in wounds, nearly beaten to death on that rainy night. For three years, he turned the matter over and over in self-reproach. He ought to hate everyone, and hate her too. Yet the moment he saw her again, watching her gently wipe her husband's lips with such tender care, the unwillingness tangled within that hatred gradually became clear.
It was all the fault of that meddlesome husband of hers. She was not to blame.