On Our Wedding Night, I Came Clean to My Cousin—and Nearly Died of Kidney Deficiency - Chapter 1

My aunt and I were very close.

She had no daughters, while my mother had plenty, so I was raised at my aunt’s side from childhood.

Her sons were both away—one serving at the frontier and the other studying at White Egret Academy in the south. With neither of them around, she poured all her maternal love into me.

I was happy with her.

When I was little, she made me delicious food and drinks and played games with me every day. Once I started learning to write, she picked me up from school daily, and then we would shop for treats and toys.

She never made me study *Lessons for Women* or *Admonitions for Women*. She said books like those only taught people to be fools. I should live as my heart desired and never treat a man as my heaven.

A man was a man, and a woman was a woman. Everyone had a world of their own and ought to focus on themselves.

I adored my aunt.

My uncle spent years at the frontier, so she ruled the marquis’s estate.

And she certainly focused on herself.

She was beautiful. She said seeing her own young, lovely face made her especially happy, and she loved buying beautiful clothes and jewelry. When my uncle’s salary and her dowry proved insufficient, she earned her own money.

I personally watched her transform from a sheltered wife who knew only how to manage farms and shops into a merchant who traveled from north to south disguised as a man.

At first, she and her maids merely made rouge and face powder to sell. When business boomed, she branched into cloth and jewelry, then began sourcing goods from the south. Later still, she opened several grain shops.

She soon brought in more than ten thousand taels of silver a month—more than the entire marquis’s estate earned in a year.

Only after going into business did she tell me, “I truly was a frog at the bottom of a well. I had no idea life could be this exciting!”

She took me everywhere, saying I needed broad horizons and should learn about everything instead of shutting myself away.

I did not learn embroidery; I learned the abacus, and I was lightning-fast at accounts.

I did not study feminine virtues; I learned riding and archery. I could clear hurdles at a gallop and hit a willow leaf from a hundred paces.

Far from staying secluded at home, I traveled to countless places with my aunt. We saw beautiful scenery, ate wonderful food, and bought piles of gorgeous gold, silver, pearls, and jewels.

But I did not have her drive. I was rather soft by nature.

Hee-hee. I suppose it was because I already had everything and felt no need to fight for anything.

My aunt showered me with love, filling the emptiness left by growing up apart from my mother.

In truth, my mother did not care about me. She cared about the little brother she had borne. Even if I had stayed with her, I would only have been ignored. I much preferred being with my aunt.

My aunt gave me lots of money and bought me everything I could want. I lacked for nothing and was happy every day.

The truth was, a happy person rarely accomplished anything very great. I knew that. Nor did I have my aunt’s abilities.

When a rival sabotaged her business, she could pull out a dagger and chop off his little finger on the spot.

I was generally the one who got dealt with instead…

Still, I was good at bluffing. I usually carried a sword and wore black, pretending to be an aloof female assassin protecting my aunt!