Chapter 17: Shielded Behind Her

Yu An’s hysterics took Liu Huaixu aback. She said nothing further—just lowered her head and went on eating.

Granted, Yu An’s reaction was excessive. But was she herself so very calm?

Wu Da’s feelings had shown themselves before she and Yu An ever married. She had played deaf and blind, given him nothing—not one thread to pull—and assumed that time would bury it.

But the years had rotted her marriage, and Wu Da’s hopes had sprouted back up.

Nothing said aloud. But Liu Huaixu could see it.

And now Yu An had gone and said it out loud, and something in her had panicked, and her mouth had run ahead of her guard.

Thank heaven Yu An’s mind had never once been on her. If it ever had been, Wu Da’s feelings would have been discovered years ago.

Their marriage was nothing like an ordinary wife-and-wife union—but even so, Liu Huaixu did not want that kind of seed planted in Yu An’s heart.

After the meal, Yu An rose to chop wood—and was stopped.

“There is nothing between Big Brother Wu and me. Don’t let your thoughts run wild.”

Yu An had assumed this was the prelude to a further lecture—instead the opening caught her flat-footed, and some giddy little voice in her sang: so she did have feelings for the original owner—then does she—

The next sentence killed the song.

“I am not like you. You may not care about your name, but I care about mine.”

A breath lodged itself in Yu An’s chest—wouldn’t rise, wouldn’t fall.

When. When do I get to clear my name even a LITTLE???

The one who didn’t care was the original owner! NOT ME!!!!

Liu Huaixu gave her no opening to say any of it aloud—she was already clearing the dishes. Yu An had no choice but to transmute grief and indignation into firewood, and went out to chop.

When she came back and found the pot full of hot water, her mood unstitched a little. She looked at Liu Huaixu’s tightly shut door and thought: cold outside, warm inside. Knew it.

So she took her hot bath in high spirits, splashing up a storm.

Liu Huaixu, not yet fully asleep, was jarred awake by the din, and snapped through the wall: “Keep it down.”

The splashing stopped. Yu An muttered into the water: praised her once and the warmth’s already gone. So fierce. Not cute at all. What a waste of that face. That figure.

At figure, her face abruptly went red.

Because she remembered tonight’s collision—that had been the first time in either of her lives she’d been that close to a woman.

And past the flusterment and the blush, a tiny splinter of incomprehension surfaced.

How do other people even… grow chests?

Hers was small and flat as a washboard. The original owner’s hadn’t been much better.

Was it the food? Did I just eat badly?

Fine—she’d grown up on her grandmother’s table, and grain rations weren’t gentry fare, but Granny had never once shorted her plate. And this world’s food—could it really be that much richer than her old one?

Yu An turned it over, felt briefly deflated—then decided there were compensations.

Height, for one.

Here, female Alpha ran taller than female Omega. Her old world had no such rule. Perhaps all her nutrition had gone into height—and into a frame sturdier than any ordinary girl’s.

Consoled, her mood lifted a good deal. She finished the bath briskly and burrowed into her quilt.

She woke the next morning just as the sky cleared—hot bath, second sleep, and she came up full of beans. A quick tidy, and she was out milling rice.

She’d decided it all last night: she needed to pile up good deeds until Liu Huaixu’s opinion of her had no choice but to move. Step one: milling!

The two of them barely spoke all day, each at her own work.

These chores had been Liu Huaixu’s since forever; with someone else shouldering them, she naturally gravitated to the lighter ones.

Yu An milled rice. Liu Huaixu carried the laundry down to the river.

Only at dusk, when the two of them sat down together to eat, did Yu An learn that Liu Huaixu had washed her clothes too.

Her face went up in flames on the spot.

“You—you could have told me!”

Her squirming made Liu Huaixu blink. This bashful version of Yu An had barely been seen since the day she presented.

And… frankly made no sense.

“Your clothes get washed by me every week of your life. What is there to announce?”

“Uh…”

Yu An scratched her head. The fact had slid her mind entirely—she’d only been thinking that, given what she and Liu Huaixu currently were to each other, having the woman wash her clothes was… not appropriate.

It had never once occurred to her that Liu Huaixu had shared a household with the original owner for years, and to her, laundry was laundry.

And at that thought, Yu An actually felt a stab of jealousy—of the original owner.

A wife like this, and dissatisfied!

Her head went hot, jealousy seized the wheel, and her mouth voted to follow: “Wifey, wash whatever you like—you don’t have to announce it to—”

“What did you just say?”

The voice, mild a heartbeat ago, went glacial—and Yu An finally heard what she’d said.

Her face crumpled. “If I said… slip of the tongue… would you believe me?”

Liu Huaixu didn’t answer. But her whole face spelled the words not a chance.

“I—” Yu An tried once more, but Liu Huaixu stepped past her and into her room, and the door closed.

Yu An glowered at it, with the growing sense that her situation had, somehow, worsened.

Before, when she’d slipped and called her that, Liu Huaixu would at least snap. Now she couldn’t even be bothered to snap.

The next day, rice milled, Yu An meant to ask how best to sell it—Liu Huaixu’s face was still a shut gate, and there was nothing to be done with that. So Yu An went next door to the Wu house and got cozy with Wu Rong instead.

Wu Da happened to be out, and Wu Rong received her like a daughter.

One step through the door and Yu An understood: it was only her house that was falling down. The Wu home was comfortably, solidly better.

Her resolve to make money went from warm to urgent.

According to Wu Rong, Zeyuan Village’s soil and water were good enough that rice merchants came every year to buy up grain. But the Yu fields were poor and yielded badly, so the merchants’ price came in low. Anyone wanting a better price could sell at the county town market themselves.

Slow, though. And endless back-and-forth.

Most villagers sold to the merchants anyway—it freed the hands for other work, and the merchants’ prices were honest. Less than the open market, but nothing to sneeze at.

Armed with all this, Yu An decided to try the market. Earning money had been the whole dream, and she’d had no map for it—now she had a road, and she could scout the stalls for other opportunities while she was at it.

Decided, done. She borrowed Wu Rong’s handcart again, and that evening laid the whole plan before Liu Huaixu.

It must have been unexpected. Liu Huaixu was silent for a long, long moment before she said, “Then I’ll come with you.”

Nothing more to it than that. She simply did not trust Yu An unsupervised.

Yu An, who understood the subtext perfectly well, nodded and said, “Sure.”

Company wasn’t a bad thing. A whole day alone out there would have crawled.

The plan settled, they slept early. The next morning, Yu An loaded the sacked rice onto the cart, and the two of them set out together.

The county town wasn’t far from Zeyuan Village—call it two hours.

The moment the market hove into view, Yu An’s excitement caught fire.

It was almost unbearably like the markets of her childhood—Grandmother’s hand around hers, the noise and the steam. Liu Huaixu plainly registered the change in her, but read it exactly wrong: Yu An had arrived at a market, and her restless blood had started up.

Liu Huaixu’s lashes lowered. A silent sigh.

Yu An parked the cart, swept her eyes around—and snagged on one direction. “Wait here a moment for me. I’ll go check something over there.”

Where Yu An sparked, Liu Huaixu stayed banked coals—but Yu An didn’t press it. Liu Huaixu had never once been warm to her, and besides, she had something real to do.

This market was plainly under management; a few men lounging at the edges were probably the overseers, and she meant to go ask about fees.

She had barely cleared the corner when Liu Huaixu found herself surrounded.

Someone decided she’d taken their spot, and—because she was a Omega—decided volume was the correct tool.

This was the scene Yu An walked back into: Liu Huaixu ringed at the center, brow drawn, that marble composure threaded through with one thin line of alarm.

A Omega, walled in by Alpha. Of course she was rattled.

Yu An sprinted. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?!”

The men turned, clocked one woman alone, and dismissed her on sight.

One of the bolder ones even provoked her to her face—reached his hand out toward Liu Huaixu.

The world went red. Heat slammed up Yu An’s neck and flooded her face, and in one driven stride she was at Liu Huaixu’s side—her hand closed on the man’s throat, and she flung him.

Her other arm swept Liu Huaixu behind her back.