She Died in the Ten Years When I Didn't Love Her

She was a quiet concubine, and no one cared about her for ten years. The head wife bullied her, the servants despised her, and even I, her husband, only regarded her as a decoration. She never argued, she just embroidered, copied scriptures, and planted the begonia that never bloomed day after day. Until that day, something happened in the house and I was desperate. She let me into her private room and poured me the last cup of tea. "Master Marquis," she said, "after I die, you open my box." I thought it was the body she had saved for ten years. Only later did I realize that what was contained there was every time I went to my wife's courtyard in the past ten years, every date I spoke coldly to her, and every time she swallowed the tears alone. And—a yellowed prescription. It turned out that she had known for a long time that something had been added to the bowl of Bizi soup. And she never told me.