When Shen Maihe was seventeen, she locked her acceptance letter in the bottom of a trunk and got married.
No one asked if she wanted to.
The day Shen Maihe married into the Sun family, the whole village said she was lucky.
Lucky? Her mother-in-law made her eat standing up, and her husband made her kneel to be beaten. She secretly kept accounts until her wrist ached.
Her husband's family said she was barren, her husband said she was unreasonable, and her mother-in-law said the accounts she kept were proof she planned to report them.
Then she left.
She walked eighteen li beneath moonlight as white as frost. When she reached the entrance to a gravel pit, she said to the scar-faced man inside, "You said you needed a bookkeeper. I'm still available."
The man looked at her for two seconds and said, "All right."
On her first day at work, she uncovered a fifty-five-yuan shortage, offended the toughest guy at the pit, and made a man in his forties learn what "ruthless" really meant.
Lei Mingshan had seen plenty of people in his life.
But never anyone like her:
She'd fallen to rock bottom, yet still held her head high.
She hadn't escaped.
She'd walked out on her own.
Eighteen li, moonlight, a gravel pit, a scar-faced man.
He said, "All right."
She said, "I belong to myself."
She thought she was only there to keep the books.
Only later did she learn that he'd been there waiting for her.
