I am Ah Jiu, the most inconspicuous fire-making maid in the Prime Minister's Mansion.
I was sold into the house at the age of eight. My wife used a poker to burn a scar on my lower back, saying that a fire-making maid was not worthy of having a name. I squatted in front of the stove and burned firewood for twelve years, and no one looked at me.
On the night when the legitimate lady ran away from her wedding, she fled from Zhenbei Prince's Mansion. Everyone in the capital knew that Zhenbei King Xiao Lin was cold-blooded and ruthless, and no one dared to marry him. The lady brought a bowl of bird's nest porridge. The porridge was poisonous, but I didn't drink it. The next day she got me drunk and put me in a sedan chair, hoping that I would die in the palace.
When getting off the sedan, Xiao Lin lifted the curtain with his own hands. He stretched out his hand to hold me, and an old scar across the tiger's mouth was thick and hot in his palm. The moment I caught up with him, he was trembling all over.
As soon as the wedding veil fell, he squatted in front of me and looked at me for a long time, half of the red candle burned down. He said: "It has been three years, and I finally found you."
He threw over a stack of drawing papers, twelve of them, ranging from cardamom to hairpin, and drew the woman's eyebrows, scars, and the habit of clasping the little finger of her left hand inwards, exactly the same as me. The back of the last page reads - "She blocked thirty-two knives for me, and I searched for her heart for three years."
He said that I was the one who shielded me from the knife at the temple fair three years ago. He said that after I lost my memory and ran away, he drew 3,000 portraits and searched the capital for three years. He said that the sedan chair and the hijab were all arranged by him, and he was waiting for me to come back.
I shook my head and said you made a mistake. He lifted up the fabric on my lower back, and the scar on my palm was attached, making it a perfect fit. The scar on his palm was left when he shielded me from the knife. I
