"Mansi!" the little girl exclaimed.
She then sheepishly strolled in: "Awu, is Master Hu forcing you to practice calligraphy again?"
Awu nodded: "Master Hu is doing this for my own good."
Mansi pursed her lips and lowered her head.
Awu looked at the top of her head and laughed, "Mansi, could it be that you're angry because I haven't spent time with you these past few days?"
"How could that be?" Mansi said, her words contradicting her true feelings, but her eyes darted around.
Awu thought for a moment, then jumped off the chair: "Mansi, Aunt Yun sent over a lot of new desserts, including glutinous rice osmanthus dumplings and scallion tofu balls. I'll go get them for you!" With that, he skipped and ran off.
Mansi watched Awu's retreating figure and took a deep breath. She turned around and sat down in front of Awu's desk, opening the second small drawer on the right. She knew that it was full of all sorts of random treasures that Awu had collected, which Awu had shown to her one by one.
After searching for a while, she finally found what she was looking for. Overjoyed, she grabbed it and ran out the door.
She ran incredibly fast, like a little embroidered ball. She ran out of the study, across the long corridor, past the lotus pond, where an anxious young man in black was waiting for her in a small pavilion.
"Did you get it?" the boy asked immediately.
Mansi blinked, suddenly at a loss for words: "You have to keep your word. I'll give you the contract of indenture, and you have to play with me. Don't lie to me."
The boy looked disheveled and looked away, saying, "I would never lie!" He just didn't want to be a servant in this small Yin mansion for sixteen years.
"You really aren't lying to me?" Mansi's eyes were full of hope.
"I'm not lying to you!" the boy shouted.
Don't feel guilty, don't feel guilty. The reason he signed that contract was to make this little girl happy. He's already wasted a year of his life. During that year, his brothers studied literature and martial arts, and people praised them. But he could only stay here with two ignorant girls. How could he be willing to accept this?
Mansi nodded, smiling as she pulled a piece of paper from her pocket: "This is your indenture."
The young man was overjoyed and reached out to take the indenture, but suddenly heard a triumphant laugh, and the indenture was already in someone else's hands.
"Hahahaha!" Awu jumped out from behind the stone pillar of the pavilion, grabbed the indenture, and laughed loudly.
"Luckily I was passing by, otherwise you would have tricked me out of the indenture!"
"You brat!" the boy gritted his teeth. Another near miss.
"Awu!" Mansi called out.
"Mansi, you stole my things!" Awu pouted angrily.
"I..." Mansi was at a loss, yet had no way to refute it. She was anxious and flustered, and tears streamed down her face.
"Hey, hey, Mansi, don't cry, that's not what I meant." Awu panicked. Mansi was a poor child she had picked up from the alley. Aunt Nan had always taught her to be careful what she said to Mansi, otherwise she would hurt Mansi's self-esteem.
"It's all that guy's fault. He lied to you, didn't he? How could Mansi possibly steal anything?" Awu touched Mansi's shoulder and glared fiercely at the boy.
Mansi pouted and went along with it: "He said, he said if I give this to him, he will keep playing with me."
Awu tapped her forehead: "Are you stupid? If he got the indenture, he would definitely leave and never come back. Why would he play with you?"
Oh, it seems so. How could she not have thought of that? Mansi looked at the boy sadly.
"A-Lu, you lied to me." She squatted on the ground and burst into tears.
A-Lu stumbled back two steps, clutching his chest. Why, why did he feel guilty? Those two girls had clearly conspired to deceive him, to lie to him!
But on the other hand, he thought, they were just lonely and wanted someone to keep them company. How complicated could such young girls be?
A-Wu put his hands on his hips and said, "A-Lu, you big liar! You bullied a girl, you shameless liar! I'm going to tell your grandma that you made Man Si cry!"
“…” A-Lu blushed.
"Hmph!" A-Wu proudly waved the indenture in his hand. "I'm going to find a safe place to hide it! You won't be able to steal it even if you try!"
Awu walked away with her head held high, leaving behind the young Alu, who glared fiercely at her back, and the little girl Shimansi, who was crying her eyes out.
Why? Why is A-Wu always so proud and domineering when arguing with A-Lu? Why is she so easily fooled by A-Lu? Shi Mansi thought as she cried.
Is she just too stupid?
But the master also said that she reads and writes very well. Although she is a little bit worse than A-Wu, everyone praises her for being very smart.
Why? Why did she have to be deceived by him? Ugh, she envied Ah Wu so much, and wished that one day she could be as brave as Ah Wu and yell at Ah Lu.
She cried as she thought, so engrossed in her thoughts that her sobs gradually subsided. Yet, the large teardrops clinging to her round cheeks only added to her pitiful appearance.
A-Lu blushed and said gruffly, "You're still crying! Wipe away your tears!"
Mansi frowned, her eyes filled with sorrow: "I'll cry, I'll cry!" As she spoke, her second round of tears was already brewing.
A-Lu became very agitated by her crying and started stomping his feet in the pavilion.
He was clearly six years older than these two girls, so how could they have him completely under their thumb? He racked his brains but couldn't figure it out.
"All you do is cry! Look at Yin Wuxiao, he never cries!" He added a hint of reproach in his voice as he got impatient.
Mansi fell silent after being scolded by him, blinking and staring blankly at him.
"You're both stupid and a real handful! I bet if I weren't around, you'd be bullied terribly by Yin Wuxiao!"
Mansi blinked again: "Awu, she's so good to me. Awu is the best person in the world."
A-Lu scoffed, "Her? She's a shameless liar! You've been fooled by her too."
Mansi lowered her head and remained silent. She really wanted to tell him that she was actually involved in tricking him into signing the contract of servitude, and that it wasn't entirely Awu's idea. But after thinking about it, she decided it was better not to tell him, lest it affect her image in his eyes.
"Why do you always talk badly about A-Wu?" she asked, utterly confused. Had he really been angry all this time? But every time he was with her, he was talking about A-Wu, and when the three of them were together, he was always arguing with A-Wu. Ugh, she felt so superfluous.
A-Lu glared at her fiercely with his sharp eyes. She immediately shrank back, not daring to ask any more questions.
Waaah, all you do is bully her. If you're so capable, go bully A-Wu.
"Will you...will you play with me?" After a long pause, she asked pitifully again.
Alu snorted, "I won't go!"
Every time he played with her, it ended badly. Last time, she forced Aunt Li's hen to swim in the pond, and the hen drowned. He had to take her to Aunt Li's house to apologize and compensate her for the chicken. The time before that, she fell into Master Zhu's flour vat and got covered in flour. He had to plead with Master Zhu to prevent the matter from being reported to Madam Yun; otherwise, Mansi would have been punished with a beating.
"You...you just said you would stay with me..." Tears began to well up in her eyes again.
A-Lu yelled at her, "You didn't get a contract of indenture, why should I play along with you? Let me tell you, I'm selling myself to the Yin family, not to you! Your surname is Shi, not Yin!"
Mansi was so stunned by his thunderous remark that it took her a long time to grasp the key point.
Ah, he sold himself to Awu, not to her.
Now I understand. Why he always seemed reluctant when playing with her, why he always bullied her but not A-Wu, and why he only argued with A-Wu and not with her.
He belongs to Awu, not to her.
Shi Mansi blinked, looking intently at the handsome, good-looking man in black in front of her. He really was good-looking.
I really want to play with him.
But he belongs to Awu, and Awu is her good friend.
Ugh, this is so messy.
She's going to find another handsome older brother and have him sign a contract of servitude, making him completely hers. As for this one, she'll leave it to Awu.
At the age of seven, little Shi Mansi laid the foundation for her life goals.
Young Cen Lu was completely unaware of how much he had been loved and how he had been abandoned from the heart.
Chapter Eleven: Green Plums Like Beans, Willows Like Eyebrows (Part Two)
Three years later.
Sixteen-year-old Cen Lu was already a mature young man, much more composed in his dealings with others. Yin Wuxiao assigned him to work as a servant for the old manager of Huanyi Study. As for the two ten-year-old girls, they had gained a lot of experience and their ability to cause trouble and mischief had also improved considerably.
During a bountiful year with heavy snow, two little girls, dressed in bright red cotton-padded jackets and with their hair in buns, strolled hand in hand down the street.
"Awu, have you ever thought about what kind of person you want to marry when you grow up?" If Awu marries Alu, will she still be able to stay by their side?
Yin Wuxiao was taken aback: "Getting married?"
Shi Mansi nodded: "After Xiaoyu from East Street got married, she lived separately from her sisters. I saw her crying yesterday."
Yin Wuxiao bit her lip, saw the disappointment in Shi Mansi's eyes, and laughed, "I'm not getting married! I want to be the most talented woman in the world!"
“Awu…” Shi Mansi’s eyes shone with light. Awu really has such ideals.
"And you? What do you want to do in the future?"
"Me..." Her ideal must not be inferior to A-Wu's. "I want to be the number one female knight-errant in the world, dedicated to fighting injustice."
Yin Wuxiao clapped his hands: "Then you can go to many places!"
Shi Mansi nodded vigorously, then thought for a moment and said, "I'll definitely come back and tell you if I see anything fun in the future!"
The two held hands and smiled at each other.
"When do you think A-Lu will be back?" Shi Mansi asked, biting into a hot sesame cake, and suddenly felt a little melancholy.
"How many times have I told you? A-Lu will be back in three days! Aren't you tired of asking so many times?" Yin Wuxiao poked her temple with one finger.
Shi Mansi frowned: "I wonder if he's doing well out there. It's so cold, and Manager Li has such a bad temper."
Yin Wuxiao crossed his arms in exasperation: "A guy like Cen Lu is always the one bullying others. We should be grateful if he doesn't bully Manager Li."
Shi Mansi pursed her lips and said nothing more.
Yin Wuxiao suddenly called out.
"What's wrong?"
"My shoes are gone," Yin Wuxiao said with a bitter face.
It turned out that the snow on the roadside was very thick, and both of Yin Wuxiao's shoes were stuck in the snow and fell off, but the two of them walked, ate and chatted without immediately noticing.
"Mansi, it's so cold." Yin Wuxiao looked pitiful.
After thinking for a moment, Shi Mansi took off one of her shoes. "Let's each take one."
Yin Wuxiao grinned: "Okay."
So the two of them walked back, each with one shoe. By the time they got home, their bare feet were completely frozen.
The servants quickly brought two basins of snow to wipe their feet, but it didn't work immediately. The two girls' lips turned purple from the cold, but their hands were tightly clasped together.