The Plums Have Ripened

For three years, a severe drought brought no harvest, and corpses of the starving littered the land.

Disaster victims stormed into my family's tofu workshop, killed my father, and violated my mother.

Heaven took pity on me, and I became the empress's personal maid, only to suffer the fall of my country.

As she lay dying, the empress entrusted her son to me. I escaped with the crown prince through a dog hole.

I started selling tofu pudding in a small southern city. A schoolteacher often came by to support my business, and whenever our eyes met, his cheeks would turn red.

On the day the teacher sent a matchmaker to propose, someone from my past rode up to my door.

His eyes were bloodshot, and his voice trembled:

"A-Wang, are you really going to marry him?"