The Maid's Bearing

My next historical romance, The Treasure Girl, is open for advance follows. Click my profile to follow! (A marriage-first, love-later romance with a young emperor) **Blurb** A record of life’s many facets, seen through the eyes of an ordinary person. In truth, it’s a workplace survival story and a tale of struggling to build a business. - On the barren plains of the northern desert, a girl as insignificant as a blade of grass was born. She had an idle older brother and a younger brother who only cared about studying and did no work. While still very young, she took on most of the burden of supporting her family. In the end, she was sold for five taels of silver into the household of a merchant in the city, to work as a low-ranking servant girl... Her mother wept and wailed. She had been sold into that man-eating place, and they would never see each other again. But the girl didn’t see it that way. A different place and a different way of life were better than slowly dying at home! She would serve as a maid, learn the rules, become literate, master the abacus, and save up her own money... One day, she would reach a wider world! - Hongyu, the senior maid serving Auntie Zhang, the housekeeper, was about to leave the household to marry, and Qingqiu was chosen to succeed her. Overnight, Qingqiu’s name spread among the three hundred servants of the Mu household. Everyone was asking who this person was. Yet the thirteen-year-old Qingqiu was truly inscrutable. The servants gossiped all night but couldn’t uncover a thing, which was terribly disappointing. “Judging by looks, she wouldn’t make the top hundred. As for her temper and personality, though, I have to hand it to her. She’s a well-known pushover far and wide!” “She’s nothing special in looks or personality, and her family is nothing much either. She’s a local from Lianzhou. Her parents were poor, so they bought her into the household for a few taels of silver a couple of years ago. She may not be born into the household, but at least she’s cleaner than the ones bought at random from outside.” “If she’s so respectable and aboveboard, how did she get in good with Zhang Hongyu?” “Remember that batch of bezoar that Third Master brought back the winter before last? There was an eighty-thousand-tael discrepancy. She was the one who caught the key culprit, and Second Master and all his underlings got dragged into the mess afterward. It was big news for ages. You really don’t remember?” “I remember the incident, but not the person. So it was her!” “Who else? She’s really risen in the world now. She went from the servants’ quarters straight to Yanshuangfei! None of the masters in our household can match the concubine’s dignity and wealth. Even the person who lights the lamps in her room has more status than we do.” “You’re asking for trouble! Who gave you the nerve to gossip about the masters?” ***Reader advisory (please read to avoid surprises): 1. The heroine is a servant girl, and a capable one at that. It will take her a long time to shed her servant status, including psychologically. 2. As the blurb says, both her parents sold her. But she has not fallen out with them; in fact, she feels deep filial affection for her mother. This is due to the times she lives in and her own personality. 3. The first seventy thousand words, before the story goes premium, depict the situations in points 1 and 2. If this makes you uncomfortable, please stop reading right away. Please don’t make personal attacks on the heroine or the author. Thank you! (This advisory may be updated at any time in response to reader feedback, so that more people who aren’t comfortable with this kind of story can avoid stumbling into it.) Theme: Born as a blade of grass, I will still grow toward the sun!