My Father Is the Chief Eunuch of the Imperial Study

My father is the chief eunuch of the Imperial Study.

When I was nine, he brought me back from outside the palace—a girl disguised as a boy—and took me in as his adopted son.

To stay alive, I claimed I was a “born eunuch,” born without a man’s parts.

When my father heard how I had been mocked and humiliated for it since childhood, his eyes reddened with pity. He personally went to the Directorate of Palace Eunuchs, added my name to the examination register, and sent me to serve the Fourth Prince.

After that, my voice grew finer, my face grew fairer, and by seventeen I still had not sprouted a single whisker.

My father was delighted. “That’s my son. You were born to be a eunuch.”

Under his careful tutelage, I rose from a lowly eunuch who served tea and water to become the emperor’s most favored attendant.

When the new emperor coughed, I knew to hand him tea. When he frowned, I knew which minister to send away. When he said, “I’m not angry,” I dug my own grave that very night.

The whole palace said I had inherited my father’s mantle.

Then one day, the new emperor cornered me in the Imperial Study and asked with a faint smile, “Did your father truly not know you were a woman?”