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My family has always cautioned me against being like their women, who “run all over the place with no morals, shame, or decency.” When I was little, I used to buy into this fear of becoming those women. But the older I got, the more confused I became about what’s so bad about them.
She must remember how it ended for Big Sister. Or does she? Sometimes, my mother’s so good at pretending nothing’s wrong that it scares me into suspecting I’m the one with the head full of false memories.
I hate the way I’ve contorted myself into what people think a girl should be, ready to please, ready to serve. Yet I love the power it’s given me, a power that lies in being underestimated, in wearing assumptions as a disguise.
So this is it. This is happening. The thing my family has only ever spoken of as the utmost crime. The surrender of what is supposedly “the most precious gift” I could give to a boy.
I stare blankly at Yang Guang’s face. I imagine slapping it. Punching it. Lacerating his flesh in ribbons off his bones. But he’s so puny, compared to the Hunduns. I just flick him on the cheek.
It’s hilarious. Men want us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.
My grin stiffens. Not because I feel a single twinge of regret, but because my rage has boiled over so fast that I have to tense my everything to contain it.
I could fire back with how people’s daughters die in Chrysalises all the time, but I don’t want to put any effort into justifying myself. I know his outburst is coming more out of his unease about me than any degree of empathy. He sure wasn’t this devastated during our first chat, right after Yang Guang’s death. No, he’s trying to worm into my mind and shackle me down with morals, so he can feel more comfortable about my existence.
“And what would you give me for trying?” I purr. “At least every privilege a non-criminal boy with my spirit pressure would have, right?”
I could die. I could really die with one twitch of the soldier’s finger. Bang, and then nothing. But if I don’t detach myself from this fear, they will pummel me with it, choke me with it, enslave me with it.
“Of course not. We are hoping that you could become like husband and wife, after all. A responsible husband disciplines his wife when she missteps, and a noble wife guides her husband when he wanders astray. Such is the natural balancing order of the world. Pilot Li, Consort Wu, we believe that, together, you can be something better.”
I have no delusions about being able to fight him off. I won’t try. It’d only let him know that my will is powerless against his strength. There’s no way to keep my dignity except to act like he is not capable of taking mine away, no matter what he does to me.
“None of you care about any of that.” “We’re led to believe we’re not allowed to care. There’s a difference.”
“That’s not a matter of losing control. Every guy who does something like that knows exactly what he’s doing. There is always a moment where he consciously decides that he will ruin someone’s life to feel better about his own. Always.”
This is it, the supposed pinnacle of female existence. What I’ve been taught to wish for, what so many little girls dream about. I have been permitted to share a male pilot’s glory, instead of merely dying to fuel it.
Abruptly, I pick out another aspect of what’s making him so unnervingly different: the distinct lack of scowling. Skies, was all that scowling just squinting?
“How do you misuse glasses?” I scoff. “Well, supposedly, you smash the lenses, sharpen the biggest fragment on the floor of your bunker, hide it in your collar, and try to slit a soldier’s throat with it.” Sima Yi shakes his head at Li Shimin, who turns back to the window with a much duller gaze than before. “Seriously, I will not be able to get them back for you a second ti—” Sima Yi does a double take on me. “Don’t look impressed!”
“I’m—why am I responsible for his behavior, anyway?” “You’re basically his wife now! That’s what you’re supposed to be.” A crushing exhaustion weighs down on my face, my brain, my bones, my everything. I swear, people cannot make up their minds about who are supposed to be the clueless infants who can’t live without supervision: men or women.
What I have learned through this madness is that you can absolutely solve your problems by throwing money at them. If you can’t, you probably don’t have enough money for that particular problem.
Countless times, I watched my father turn my mother into a nervous wreck by simply transforming himself into a dark cloud of a presence. He wouldn’t use any curses or shouts, but he’d set his bowl down a little too loudly, or slam doors a little too harshly. She’d step cautiously around him as if he were a bomb, worrying about her every move for fear of setting him off. Without uttering a single word, he’d teach her to twist herself into knots to prioritize his needs and wants, in some strangling hope of quelling the pressure in the house and returning things to normal.
I’ve always known Yizhi wasn’t a “good” person. The only utterly good people in the world are either naive or delusional. I could never associate with someone like that. There was always an element of danger, an edge of a thrill, to our meet-ups. I could’ve died if someone had caught us together. He knew this. No one truly pure would’ve continued subjecting me to that kind of pressure.
“You endure and endure, and for what? As long as you keep appeasing them, keep letting them get their way, why would they ever get better? Violence gets them everything they want. And then what is there in the end but death?”
“But you have to realize that most concubine pilots can’t just make a scene,” Xiuying says, weary and hollow. “The safety and livelihood of their families are on the line. The best we can do is to support each other.
In hindsight, I was such a fool to have assumed Qieluo would stand by me just because she’s also female. It was my grandmother who crushed my feet in half. It was my mother who encouraged me and Big Sister to offer ourselves up as concubines so our brother could afford a future bride.
How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re meant to do nothing but serve from the minute they’re born. You tell them they’re weak. You tell them they’re prey. You tell them over and over, until it’s the only truth they’re capable of living.
“All my life, I’ve been told this is the worst and filthiest thing I could do! Do you know how many times my family has threatened to shove me in a pig cage and drown me because they suspected me of getting close with a boy? And now you want me to spontaneously sleep with a guy I hate?”
