0097 Lighting the Lamp (Part Two)
The next day, Shu Fu woke up very early. The outside was still covered with a layer of bluish-white light, like an autumn crab shell. No lights were on anywhere. In the dim light, she stretched her fingers and slowly felt the damp and sticky sensation between her legs. Suddenly, her mind cleared and she sat up abruptly.
With her making such a racket, Zhan Yaoguang naturally couldn't sleep either. She groggily opened one eye and asked in a hoarse voice, "What's wrong with you...?"
Halfway through the question, he regained his senses and sat up with her: "Is it the pain you mentioned last night?"
Shu Fu hadn't expected him to still remember this, and for a moment she didn't know how to explain. After hesitating for a while, she whispered:
"My period has started."
Zhan Yaoguang looked at her blankly for a moment, then turned to look at her: "Are you in a lot of pain?"
Shu Fu rolled over and lay on the pillow, embarrassed, and said, "There's some... mainly because I didn't expect it to come at this time, and I'm afraid it will soil my clothes and the bed."
"I'm glad you're not in pain anymore. I can help you wash these." Zhan Yaoguang breathed a sigh of relief and reached out to take her hand.
Feeling apologetic, Shu Fu quietly pulled his hand back, saying, "Thank you."
After daybreak, Shu Fu stood by the window and casually beckoned a maid to inform Li Miao that she had started menstruating.
The maid nodded in agreement, and not long after, Li Miao sent Cai Cai to come in person.
Shu Fu had changed into clean clothes, but she looked listless and slumped on the small table in the tatami room.
Seeing Cai Cai lead a large group of people in, he was quite surprised.
"Sister Cai Cai, what are you doing?"
Cai Cai stood in front of Shu Fu, bowed, and said, "The princess knows that the second young lady is not feeling well, so she specially asked me to bring some things."
She beckoned to the maid behind her to come forward and present the items to Shufu.
A felt mat, a hot pot, and a steaming bowl of brown sugar ginger tea are all she needs right now.
“The princess told the second young lady to rest well and not to worry about the other ladies, as she will take care of them,” Cai Cai said. “Because the second young lady might not be used to it, the princess sent someone back to the capital to summon A-Jian, who is by the young lady’s side. The second young lady should wait a little longer.”
Shu Fu felt a warmth in her heart upon hearing this: "Thank you for making this trip, Sister Cai Cai. Please thank Miao Miao for me."
After Cai Cai left, Shu Fu unfolded the felt blanket and covered herself with it, then stuffed the hot water stove and everything else into the blanket, and the warmth finally began to spread.
She sighed, leaned lazily against the corner of the small couch, and after a few breaths, her gaze slowly fell on the cup of brown sugar ginger tea.
She paused, carefully placed the small cup on the small table in front of her, then lowered her face to its level, staring at it blankly for a while. After a while, she leaned in to sniff it a few times, then immediately turned her face away in disgust.
Zhan Yaoguang sat on the beam watching her from afar. Seeing her actions, he couldn't help but speak up: "You..."
Before he could finish speaking, Shu Fu stepped off the bed in soft shoes, picked up the teacup, and walked to the window in a few steps. She carefully pushed open a small crack and slowly poured the ginger tea from the cup out through that tiny gap.
Halfway through pouring, she suddenly turned her head away alertly and saw Zhan Yaoguang looking at her with a surprised expression.
Shu Fu frowned, then threatened him fiercely: "This stuff is for nourishing blood and qi, but I don't need it. It's not that I'm afraid of the smell of ginger. You're not allowed to tell anyone!"
"……oh."
Shu Fu poured out all the ginger tea, feeling much better. She looked up at Zhan Yaoguang and said, "Come down! I won't go out today. How about we read together?"
Zhan Yaoguang has recently been studying the classics, especially poetry, in his bad habit of studying the Central Plains. He has put a lot of effort into memorizing them, which can be considered as making up for the absurdity of his studies in the clan when he was young.
Shu Fu then found some obscure chapters that she had never read before and made a bet with him to see who could recite one first. They even imitated the gambling den's entertainment, with the loser letting the winner freely paint on their face with ink.
However, in the final battle, Zhan Yaoguang could not be said to have lost more than he won, but at least he did not win a single game.
Although the biographies Shu Fu chose for herself were quite long, her natural intelligence allowed her to memorize them after only reading them two or three times.
At this time, Zhan Yaoguang was often still struggling with punctuation, and even reading through the text once was a struggle.
He vaguely remembered that the last time he lost to Shu Fu was when Shu Fu smiled so hard that her eyes were curved into two crescent moons. She took a rabbit hair brush, dipped it in cool ink, and drew three horizontal lines on each side of his cheeks.
But she didn't know that the color was hard to remove, which caused him to scrub his face until it turned red while washing it, and he almost peeled off a layer of skin.
Thinking of this, Zhan Yaoguang became even more reluctant to walk towards her, and said with a sour face, "Do I really have to compete with you?"
Shufu nodded.
"This is unfair!" Zhan Yaoguang said indignantly. "I don't even know many of your characters, yet you expect me to memorize things in the same amount of time as you. This is simply making things difficult for you!"
“Then I’ll let you recite one, and I’ll recite two,” Shu Fu blinked and reached out to grab his sleeve. “Besides, you’ve already come to my side, so you must have agreed.”
Upon hearing this, Zhan Yaoguang paused, a faint blush rising behind her ears. She wished she could immediately cut off her two outward-facing legs. Helpless, she could only pull out two books from the bookshelf in the room and hand one to her.
"You said it yourself, so you're giving me one copy. You can't go back on your word."
He kicked off his shoes, sat down opposite her, and began to carefully read one of the short poems.
As it turns out, a bright person can still get ahead even if asked to read one more article.
Just then, a pair of white doves flew in from the clear blue sky outside the window and perched on the windowsill behind Shufu. Shufu glanced at them and saw their snow-white, innocent appearance, so she said to her two little friends in a gentle tone: "Someone is reading in the room, so please don't make any chirping noises."
After the two birds left, Mianmian, who was by Li Miao's side, came over again and asked if she was feeling any better. She leaned against the window and replied to Mianmian in a gentle and cheerful voice.
Even so, Shuf still memorized two long poems before him.
Zhan Yaoguang was frantically memorizing the last sentence when he felt Shu Fu subtly tugging at his clothes. A sudden panic gripped him, but he forced a composed facade, finally saying expressionlessly:
"I understand. Wait a little longer, I'll come over after I finish reciting this and you can punish me as you please."
Shufu nodded, curled up on the inside of the soft couch, hugged the felt and watched him for a while, before finally closing her eyes to take a nap.
She drank too much last night and barely slept. Today, she is also experiencing severe abdominal pain due to her period. Nothing is more soothing than sleep.
Not long after she closed her eyes, she snuggled up in the warm blanket and fell asleep.
After Zhan Yaoguang finished reciting, he looked up and saw Shu Fu with her head drooping, fast asleep.
Outside, the clear sky was as if washed by water, and the window framed by the diamond pattern on the wall naturally became a vibrant spring scene.
His eyes narrowed, and he couldn't help but feel a little tempted. He leaned over and rubbed his finger against her cheek.
Shufu's sleep was disturbed, and she instinctively opened her mouth to bite, biting right on his fingertip.
Zhan Yaoguang winced in pain and quickly pulled her hand back. Looking at her oblivious expression, he suddenly felt a little annoyed.
A breeze blew in through the window and he saw a cluster of flowers. He couldn't tell what they were, but he knew they were brightly colored, and a strange thought immediately came to his mind.
He casually crushed the soft petals, squeezed out the juice, and applied it to the girl's brow, carefully drawing a not-so-beautiful flower.
“You’ve drawn me so many times, you should ask me to draw you once,” the boy murmured. Suddenly, he remembered the day she looked at him and laughed, saying that his disheveled appearance made him look like a pitiful cat. So he added, “There’s one more thing, I don’t look like any cat or dog.”
Zhan Yaoguang moved his fingers down and used flower juice to leave three streaks on each of her fair cheeks.
The next moment, however, he remembered another sentence Shufu had said to him: "My mother doesn't like birds, cats, or dogs, so I've never kept any other living creatures besides you. So, can you dress up and make me happy from time to time?"
He softened again and added, "It's okay to pretend occasionally."
Zhan Yaoguang's hand fell, just in time to grasp her slightly cool hand that was outside the felt.
He glanced down, paused slightly, then took it in his palm and began to caress it gently.
———
It was actually—
Purely romantic scene (fingers)
Okay, there might be a little twist in the next chapter, hmm...
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