A Hundred Obstacles to Love for a Modern-Day Servant

At nineteen, the household servant Shen Ci was assigned to Lu Jin, whose parents had both died in a car accident when he was eleven. Shen Ci did everything: housework, cooking, grocery shopping, laundry. Then, when Shen Ci was twenty-seven, he was forced to leave Lu Jin and transferred to the Lu family’s estate in Europe. They were separated for four years. When Lu Jin saw him again, the years had worn down the man’s sharp edges and weathered the corners of his eyes. He lifted Shen Ci’s chin, rough with calluses, with his icy fingertips, his voice low and dangerous: “You look a little older, and a little uglier. Seems you’ve had it too easy these past four years.” “Shen Ci, even if something of mine is broken or ruined, it belongs where I can see it.” This time, Lu Jin wouldn’t let him go, and Shen Ci wouldn’t be allowed to leave again.