My parents named me Zhaodi, hoping I would bring them a little brother.
The year my eldest sister married into the Shen family, they exchanged her for two dou of sorghum.
Shen Yaozu said he would marry me when he returned after finishing his studies. I waited year after year.
What came instead was my eldest sister, pregnant and falsely accused of carrying a bastard, bleeding to death on the delivery bed.
What came instead was Shen Yaozu’s father, an old landlord with one foot in the grave, having me carried through the back gate in a sedan chair.
On my wedding night, my groom was an old man with graying hair.
And the young man I loved was far away in the provincial capital, knowing nothing.
Later, I set a great fire with my own hands.
Everyone said Lin Zhaodi died in those flames.
Years later, on the Northern Expedition battlefield, Captain Shen, his body covered in scars, clutched a nurse’s hand in the military hospital.
His eyes reddened. “Zhaodi, you’re still alive…”
He didn’t know that my tears had dried up long ago in that fire.
