Princess In The Palace

2. Their First Encounter

Chapter 2.

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Recap: Crown Princess sent Yì Róng away to Ān Yù, without telling her reasons why. Xiǎo Rù showed up in front of Ān Yù, handing the Princess to her and disappeared. However, Ān Yù never told Yì Róng the truth and the little girl only knew that they were commoners living in the outskirts of a small village.

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Five more years had passed, the baby had become a toddler, and now a little girl who understood words. She was a beautiful girl, indeed, for her mother was also a beautiful woman. Ān Yù and Pī Yáng rarely let her do chores, for they knew that she was someone who held the name Liú. She was a princess, the least they could do was to not let her do way too much chores for it was not fit of a princess. They let her had the best they could. Her hair was donned beautifully everyday, with Pī Yáng's hands which used to do the same to Ān Yù's back in the palace. She would bathe in fragrant herbs they found in nature and her skin was kept as polished as possible. She was indeed a princess, a princess in her own little world.

She was only ten years old, but many villagers had seen her beauty and wanted her to marry their sons. No doubt Ān Yù would politely reject them, with reasons of her being way too young.

"Say, Lady Yè (Yeva), why not just let Yì Róng marry into our family? I will gladly write off the debts you owe to me since we will be in-laws." The old man sitting before her was staring at her through his yellowed eyes, wrinkles forming at their corners. He was the richest man in the small village, the village chief after all. He wanted the little girl for himself, a perverted seventy years old man.

"I will pay the debts myself." Ān Yù looked away from him, holding in the disgusted feelings she had towards him. It was wrong of her to borrow money from him, just because she did not want to touch whatever was left by him to her. However, it seemed that she had no choice but to do so, soon.

"I will not wait any longer. You have owed me for more than half a year, you must pay me back by next week. Or else, you know what you have to pay me back with."

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Maybe they should have returned many years ago, so that they would not be kept in suspense. Maybe they were really meant to return, for that was where she truly belonged, where they truly belonged. Maybe they were being dragged in by fate, the fate that they had to return one day, no matter what.

And the next day, when the hut was empty, when the hut was set on fire, burning it down to ashes and leaving no traces of them behind, when the village chief received a piece of silver enough to repay the debts a hundred times over, they left, never to return, never to look back. Because there were certainly more reasons to leave than to stay, because the flowers were slowly wilting, the beauty of the world was slowly fading and its ugliness slowly surfacing, because life was ruthless and her sins were unforgiven, because fate was unforgiving, because her past was unforgotten.

However, the little girl had no knowledge about how ugly her life would turn out to be, all because of the sins of the people from the generations before hers. She was the one who had to bear them all, because all the sufferings, sins and the consequences must end with her, or they would never end. Why was she the one? Maybe...maybe it was because she was who she really was, because being herself was already a sin itself.

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"Aunt, where are we going?" Yì Róng asked Ān Yù as she flipped the rough cloth covering the window of the carriage. She was beyond excited, since she was a little girl after all, since it was her first time riding in a carriage. The greeneries that they passed by seemed to be waving, bidding farewell to the ones they had always loved and protected.