I don't want to marry the Emperor!

3

A/N: Vote & comment

A year later

When Yu Jiang leans over the edge of a large, clear lake, a soft and delicate face greets him on the clear water surface. As Yu Jiang stares at the reflection, a small sigh escapes from his lips.

It has been about a year since Yu Jiang first saw this reflection, but he has yet to fully adjust to his new appearance. In fact, even though "this" is happening to Yu Jiang and he is waking up every morning to "this" reflection, the whole thing still seems like a dream to him.

Yu Jiang just could not process how he, who is supposed to have been dead, is still alive and in someone else's body. However, since there is nothing that Yu Jiang could do about his situation, but accept it and pretend to be this person, Yu Jiang did just that.

With that said, even though Yu Jiang had settle on pretending to be the person, he still could not help but feel sorry towards the real owner of "this" body, and felt worse when he learned that "this" body's original owner has a little sister. Yu Jiang couldn't help but feel as if he had stolen things from them both, albeit unwillingly. That's why, once he came to terms with the fact his soul is now inside someone else's body, in some other dimension different from Earth, he decided to lessen his guilt by taking care of the girl as best as he can...

At least that was what he had internally swore to himself, when he came to terms with his current situation at the time. However, now that he's become more knowledgeable about this new world, he wasn't exactly sure how to carry out that promise.

---

From what Yu Jiang was able to gather in the past year, he figured out that this world is very similar to one of those ancient fantasy Chinese worlds portrayed in movies on Earth. So that means status, wealth, and happiness are mostly, if not all, determined by birth and these two, as in the original body owner and his sister, are unfortunately on the wrong side of the stick. They are servants in the Yu manor.

Now, if they were just a servant and a maid, Yu Jiang could have taken the girl out of the manor and figure out a way to earn money (since he is skilled in quite a lot of things), however as if this is a part of a drama, these two are the illegitimate children of the Master of the house, and the Master's wife is set on making them her servants for life.

Therefore, it is no easy matter to bring the girl out of the manor safely.

So, with another sigh, Yu Jiang shakes his head at the mess that he is thrown into and begins scooping water into the large water basin by his side.

---

Once the water basin is half-way full, Yu Jiang carefully lifts it up and places it inside the wooden cart and leisurely rolls it back towards the Yu Manor.

Per usual, as Yu Jiang makes his way into Miss Yu Ning's (Master Yu's legitimate daughter) bathroom with the large water basin, just as he places the water basin by Yu Ning's large, hand crafted wash basin and was about to begin pouring in the water, Yu Ning snarks at him "I want a new tub of water."

Having gone through this numerous times before, with his head still casually bowed, Yu Jiang nods and carries the water basin back towards the cart and then slowly, takes his time, rolling it back towards the large clear lake.

As Yu Jiang rolls the cart away from the wing, like usual, he hears Yu Ning's maids compliment her actions and Yu Ning laughing as she proudly declares "Yu Ning will make sure that his hands are full of blisters by the end of the day. ahahaha"

Now, upon hearing those insulting words any normal person would be angry, but Yu Jiang could care less and just continues to SLOWLY and causally roll away his cart.

Once he arrives to the large clear lake, Yu Jiang again, carefully lifts the large water basin and places it by the edge of the lake and then pats away any big pieces of particles on the ground besides the large basin and lays down with his arms behind his head and his legs cross.

Since, according to Yu Ning's mind, it is still too early to take a bath that's why she has the luxury to mess with him, Yu Jiang saw no point in hurrying back nor dumping out and refilling the large jar when Yu Ning cannot even tell the difference. Instead, he has chosen to use these times as an excuse to avoid his other chores and relax. After all, the chores that he is assigned to were superfluous and ridiculous and it is not like anyone will be able to truly tell that he did them.

---

After about three hours, after the sun has finally set, Yu Jiang gets up from his relaxing position and begins to slowly scoop up a few jars full of water and pours it into the large water basin. As he did this, as he had expected, two of Yu Ning's maids appear from afar and were quickly walking towards him with smirks on their faces.

Once they reach Yu Jiang, like usual, the two maids sneer out why he has yet to arrive and like usual, Yu Jiang tells them that the "blisters" on his hands had yet to heal and the heavy, rough pressure from the water jar was hurting his hands that's why he is slow.

Having personally seen the state that his hands were in a some months ago and Yu Jiang's expression of pain along with his confession seems to have satisfy the maids, so they did not pry more and simply commended Yu Jiang to hurry up. Which he did.

---

Since it was late and according to the what the maids had told her, Yu Jiang did suffer, Yu Ning accepted the "new" tub of water and shoos Yu Jiang away to complete his other tasks.

However, since the other tasks were hard to monitor, Yu Jiang ignored them and quickly runs back towards a tiny shed by the edge of the servant quarter.

As he enters the tiny wooden shed, as expected, Yu Bai had prepared two bowls of porridge for the both of them. As Yu Jiang stares at the hungry expression on Bai's face, he felt his heart sink a little.

"Didn't I tell you to eat and not wait for me." Jiang soft tells Bai as he walks towards the small and low wooden table.

"But I want to eat with Jiang gege." Bai softly says with a cute little pout.

The cute little innocent pout was effective enough to wipe away any reprimand words that Jiang had prepared. So Jiang grabs a small cloth and rise it in some cold water in the small cracked water basin and quickly wipes away all the dirt from the girl's face, as her arms fly about.

---

When Jiang finally stops and moves his hand away from Bai's face, a slightly pinkish but overall, beautiful ivory face stared at him with teary eyes and pouty lips.

"aren't you hungry. Eat." Jiang tells Bai as he rinses out the dirt from the small cloth.

With a sniff, Bai takes the bowl of porridge into her hands and slowly takes a sip as she mumbles out, "Jiang gege is so mean. What if Bai cannot find a husband anymore."

Knowing that Bai is referring to the amount of pressure that he used when he wiped her face, Jiang lets out a small chuckle and but says nothing. Because, due to the nature of work that the Master's wife orders Bai to do, the filth on her face is not easy to come off and if he does not wipe it off, it will eventually eat into her skin and scar her face.