Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Picked Up a Man

Chun Zhi called out: “Hey, are you okay? Wake up!”

She reached down to help the man who had fallen in the road, but when she touched him, her hand came away covered in blood, and her face went pale. These wounds were far too serious to be from a bump with a handcart. No one was nearby and there were no witnesses, so Chun Zhi half carried and half dragged the man into her tofu workshop and laid him on the bed.

Night had already fallen, and the room was pitch black.

Chun Zhi could not see anything. She lit the oil lamp on the table and held it by the bed. The man was very young, about twenty-three or twenty-four. His body was covered in sword wounds, and his dark robe was soaked with blood.

She leaned close to feel for his breath. He was still breathing.

Chun Zhi took out every kind of wound medicine she had, then brought scissors, a stack of white cloth, and a basin of hot water. Sitting by the bed, she spoke to the unconscious man: “Your injuries are bad, and your clothes are no good anymore. I am going to cut them open to treat you, so do not blame me when you wake up.”

The man could not answer.

Chun Zhi cut his clothes into pieces and tossed the rags on the floor. She dipped a cloth square into the hot water and wiped his body bit by bit. The cloth quickly turned red. She washed and wiped again and again, carrying out four or five basins of bloody water before she finally got him clean.

Maybe work keeps a person from feeling sad. While she cleaned his face, Chun Zhi noticed that even with so many wounds, he still looked noble and handsome.

All her life, the best-looking person she had seen was Lu Jing Yun. Yet this man did not lose to Lu Jing Yun at all. He might even be a little better.

Chun Zhi put medicine on all his wounds and wrapped them with white cloth. She had no men’s clothes here, so she pulled a quilt over him and thought: [Tomorrow when it is light, I will go buy him a fresh set of clothes.]

After all that, she was exhausted. She had worked all day, been driven out by the Lu Clan, and now had picked up a badly hurt man. [I am worn out.]

But tomorrow still had to run as usual. Chun Zhi went to the front room of the tofu shop to soak the soybeans for the morning.

When she finished, she went back to the small back room and kept watch beside the man’s bed. There was only one bed in the place. Since he was using it, she had nowhere to sleep and could only make do with a chair.

She did not know when he would wake up. [What if he burns with fever in the night and gets worse?] Worried, she dragged the chair to the bedside and sat there to watch him.

The night grew deeper. Wind and rain beat outside. The little oil lamp flickered in the draft.

Watching, Chun Zhi started to doze.

Thunder split the sky, and heavy rain poured down. Chun Zhi jerked awake, walked quickly to the window, and saw a shadow outside, sneaking around. [A thief.]

She hurried to the table, grabbed the same scissors she had used, blew out the lamp, and hid behind the bed, using the bed-curtain to cover herself.

Someone climbed in through the window. Feeling his way in the dark, he snickered: “Chun Zhi, good Chun Zhi, I heard you were kicked out by the Lu Clan. Your brother came to comfort you. Where are you? Why not answer?”

Chun Zhi recognized the voice. It was Zhang Hu, a street thug who always tried to touch her when he came to buy tofu. Before, he had stayed careful because she was promised as a child bride to Lu Jing Yun. Today he had heard that Lu Jing Yun had married an official’s daughter and thrown her away, so he had sneaked over in the night.

The rain outside grew louder, rushing and hissing.

Chun Zhi hid behind the bed, gripping the scissors with both hands and holding her breath. The room was black as ink. Zhang Hu could not see her at all, and the fire striker he carried had been soaked by the rain, so he could not spark a light. He groped his way forward in the dark.

“Ow!” Zhang Hu bumped into the table and yelped.

Chun Zhi’s heart thumped in her throat.

Her place was off the main street, and it was pouring outside. Even if she shouted for help, no one would hear in time. It would only give away where she was. She clenched her teeth and kept quiet, waiting for Zhang Hu to step closer so she could stab him.

“Good Chun Zhi, do not be silent,” he coaxed. “Call me brother. Brother will be good to you.”

He rubbed his belly where he had hit it, walked around the table, and kept feeling his way forward. The room was small. Soon he reached the bed, lifted the quilt, and touched a bare body.

“Oh, no clothes,” he said with joy. “Chun Zhi, you knew your brother would come tonight, so you took everything off and waited for me, right?”

He reached lower. Suddenly the person on the bed moved. A hand clamped down and snapped Zhang Hu’s arm, then a kick sent him flying.

Zhang Hu slammed into the wall, coughed blood, and fell. He gasped: “You are not Chun Zhi. Who are you?”

“Leave,” the man on the bed said in a low voice.

Just one word, yet it was full of force.

“A man! Chun Zhi, you hid a man in your house!” Zhang Hu shouted as he scrambled for the window and tried to climb out.

The man on the bed grabbed the medicine bottle by the pillow and flung it like a hidden weapon. It struck him squarely. Zhang Hu dropped from the window frame and collapsed, babbling: “Spare me, hero! Spare me! I will not dare again! If I had known you were here, I would not have come!”

He crawled and rolled away into the rain.

Chun Zhi stayed behind the curtain a little longer. Only when the footsteps faded did she lift the curtain and step out.

Hearing her move, the man on the bed grabbed her and pulled her close, pinching her neck as he said: “Who are you? Why are you skulking around in the dark?”

Chun Zhi reacted on instinct and tried to stab him with the scissors, but he twisted and trapped both her hands. The scissors fell to the floor with a clatter.

His grip hurt. She forced out a rough whisper: “I saved you.”

“You saved me?” the man said coldly. “I fainted, not lost my memory. You pushed a handcart into me.”

Even so, he quickly let go.

Chun Zhi staggered back eight steps and rubbed her neck as she said: “You were already badly hurt. If you had no wounds, a little bump from a cart would not lay you out, would it?”

She had been afraid he would die at her doorway. If officers came to question her, she would never explain it clearly. That was why she brought him inside. Now he had woken only to say she hit him. Yes, the cart had bumped him, but he had fainted because of his wounds, not that bump. She needed to make this clear.

She said: “I could have left you in the street. In a storm like that, no one would come out to help. You would have been soaked all night and might have died by morning. Now you are lying here in my bed and strong enough to choke me. How is that not me saving you?”

The room was dark, so dark you could not see your own hand.

The man almost laughed from anger. He ran his hand over his body and felt several bandaged spots, already treated with medicine. The girl said she saved him. It was not pure nonsense.

Chun Zhi felt for the table, found the fire striker, and lit the oil lamp.

The moment the flame rose, the man snapped the quilt up and covered himself, displeased as he said: “Why did you light the lamp so suddenly?”

He had nothing on under the quilt. Chun Zhi only remembered this after the lamp lit up the room. His tone, as if she had taken advantage of him, made her both angry and amused: “Why are you so jumpy?”

She said: “When I dressed your wounds, I already wiped your whole body. What difference does one more look make?”

“You,” he said with a frown, never having seen such a bold, ill-mannered miss. He scolded: “Country girl, no shame.”

“I am a country girl. And what are you, some kind of lord?” she shot back. On a normal day, she might not argue. But today she had swallowed too much hurt, and her anger would not settle. She said: “Saving a life does not split men and women. If I had fussed over rules while saving you, should I have left you in the street to die?”

His handsome face stiffened as he muttered: “Sharp tongue.”

“Then leave,” Chun Zhi said.

He fell silent. Was he unwilling to go? No. If he had not been naked, he would have gone already.

After a while, he spoke again: “Where are my clothes?”