Cherished

My young mistress was frail, while her husband was exceptionally vigorous.

Afraid he would hurt her, every night he first dragged me to a side room to sate himself.

Then he returned to my young mistress’s chamber and gathered her tenderly into his arms to sleep.

He despised me.

Whenever he took me to bed, he called me a shameless little temptress who could not compare to my young mistress in the slightest.

If he had not been so concerned for her, he would never have touched me.

And so he and my young mistress remained a loving couple all their lives, while I spent mine as their bed-warming maid.

Thirty years—ten thousand nine hundred and fifty nights—and not one of them missed.

As I lay dying, he stood beside my bed holding my young mistress’s hand and sighed softly, ‘From now on, it will truly be just the two of us for life, so promise you won’t push me away again, all right?’

My young mistress sobbed against his chest, so grief-stricken she nearly fainted.

‘Chunxing, I wish I had never chosen you as his bedchamber maid. You stole the husband who should have belonged to me alone.’

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day my young mistress was choosing her future husband’s bed-testing maid.

I knelt before her and said, ‘I already have someone I love. Please grant us your blessing.’