"The key point is that when Liu Yuru drew the rhyme for 'toilet', her face stunk even more than a toilet!" Mo Zhu's eyes lit up, and she tied the Buddhist beads pouch around her waist, letting the tassels sweep across the snow. "I'll go right away!"
When I reached the moon-shaped gate, I saw my eldest sister, Su Qingyao, leaning against a red lacquer pillar, tossing a gilded brocade box in her hand. She was wearing a pomegranate-red bodice, her dark hair loosely tied up, her eyebrows raised in a half-smile. "Here, this is for you."
The moment the brocade box was opened, the phoenix hairpin made of red gold and dotted with kingfisher feathers shone brightly in the twilight - the phoenix's eyes were two pigeon blood rubies, and the kingfisher feathers on its tail were clearly visible, trembling gently with my movements, reflecting a green hue on my palm.
"Sister, this is too precious!" I wanted to close the lid of the box, but she held the back of my hand, and my fingertips felt like warm jade.
"Just take it if I tell you to. Why all this nonsense!" She suddenly leaned in closer, the scent of rose rouge mixed with the crisp air after the snow wafting towards me. "I heard that at the poetry gathering today, that little bitch Liu Yuru used the 'toilet' to give you a hard time."
I nodded, and the tail feathers of the Phoenix hairpin brushed across my palm, giving me a cool and itchy feeling.
Su Qingyao suddenly snorted coldly, her voice very low: "If you dare to act like a demon again next time, I will make up a song about her mother's affair with a man and have the opera troupe sing it for three months!" She paused, her fingertips rubbing against the strands of hair at my temples, "Oh, I also heard..."
"Eldest sister!" I looked up suddenly and met her mischievous eyes, which were filled with the light from the lanterns in the corridor, like two dancing candle flames.
"Alright, alright," she said, letting go of my hand and taking a half step back. Her moon-white petticoat swept the lingering snow below, startling a few sparrows hiding behind the rockery. "Men should marry when they're old enough, and women should marry when they're old enough. You're old enough, too. That Jiang Zhuangyuan..." She suddenly pulled out a diamond-shaped mirror, the surface still bearing her body warmth, and thrust it into my hand. "I just saw him at the corner gate. He sent a servant with a bag of sugar-roasted chestnuts, saying it was... compensation for stealing your sugar painting today."
I stared at my burning cheeks in the mirror when I suddenly heard the young marquis's voice yelling from the front yard: "Sister! Who is that blind man bullying you? I'll chop him with my big knife!"
My eldest sister rolled her eyes and shoved her Phoenix hairpin into my bun, the tail feathers swaying gently. "Look at your brother, he's like a firecracker. Come back to the house quickly. I'll have someone stew bird's nest for you with lychee paste to help reduce internal heat."
At dusk, Mo Zhu arrived carrying bird's nests, a piece of sugar-roasted chestnut shell still clinging to her temple. "Miss, Zhang Tiezui said he'll start a lecture tomorrow, and he's comparing Liu Yuru to 'gold and jade fallen into a cesspool!'" She handed over an oil-paper package like a treasure. The kraft paper was stamped with the Zhang's Sugar Painting stamp. "This was sent by Jiang Zhuangyuan, who asked the servant to deliver it. He said... last time at the Li residence, he saw you gazing intently at your sugar-painted dragon, so he asked Master Zhang to repaint it."
I opened the oil-paper package. Inside was not a majestic sugar dragon, but a distorted sugar earthworm. Next to it was a line of small words written in sugar thread: "My humble work for Jinli, please don't laugh."
With a puff of air, I sprayed half a cup of bird's nest onto the table. The white bird's nest silk clung to my sleeves, like falling spring snow. Mo Zhu leaned over to take a look, suddenly pointing at the earthworm's tail. "Look, young lady! This earthworm's tail is curled into a coil. Doesn't it look like... does it look like that bamboo orchid bookmark that Jiang Zhuangyuan gave me last time?"
Outside the window, snow began to fall again, rustling against the lattice like someone whispering something. I pinched a sticky sugar worm and suddenly remembered Jiang Yan's appearance today in the snow at Li's residence—his blue shirt covered in snow, a bamboo flute slung across his waist. The look he gave me was like the malt sugar Master Zhang had melted, sticky and sweet, and so hot it made me feel uneasy.
"Ink bamboo," I carefully placed the sugar painting into the brocade box, placing it side by side with the bamboo orchid bookmark. "Go get the phoenix hairpin that my eldest sister gave me. I want to wear it to the poetry club gathering tomorrow."
Mo Zhu responded crisply, then suddenly turned back with a cunning glint in her eyes, "Miss, tell me... Did Jiang Zhuangyuan know that Liu was going to cause trouble for you, so he deliberately went to the Li Mansion to wait?"
I gazed at the intertwined sugar-painted earthworms and bamboo-carved orchids in the brocade box, my fingertips gently brushing the cool lid. The gleam of snow outside the window reflected the candlelight inside, tinting the crabapple cakes on the table a warm golden hue. Suddenly, this cold winter night didn't seem so chilly after all. I wondered if, when Mrs. Liu heard from the servants that Zhang Tiezui had compared her niece to "gold inlaid in a cesspool of jade," she would be so enraged that she would hurl her beloved jade tea set to the ground.
Thinking of this, I couldn't help laughing out loud, startling the swallows nesting on the beams and making them fly up, shaking off the star-like snow all over the yard and making a floor full of broken snow under the corridor.
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