Chapter 208
The two found a quiet corner to sit down. After ordering wine and dishes, Luo Biao spoke up, "If you hadn’t come looking for me, I was about to go find you."
The waiter brought a pot of wine and poured for them. Shen Xuanqing raised his cup and clinked it with Luo Biao’s, asking, "What’s the matter?"
"The hunter from Niujia Village found out you raise a lot of rabbits. Last winter, he also built a rabbit shed and raised quite a few. He heard you supply them to the brothel, and these past few days, he’s been pulling strings, drinking with the head chef and offering benefits."
Lowering his voice, Luo Biao continued, "Back then, when the head chef recorded the accounts for the brothel, he listed each rabbit at fifty copper coins. After much persuasion, I managed to get ours down to forty-five. That guy surnamed Niujia is selling his to the head chef for forty each, blatantly snatching business. A couple of days ago, I ran into Eldest Brother Shen on his way back from your place in town. He told me you might stop supplying rabbits to the brothel. I hadn’t even reported it back to the brothel when this happened."
The head chef and Luo Biao weren’t particularly close. With greater benefits at stake, naturally, he wouldn’t let the money slip away.
Shen Xuanqing smiled and said, "Seems like it’s just fate. If it can’t be done, then forget it. No point fighting over it, just wasted effort and unnecessary anger."
Since he took it so lightly, Luo Biao stopped dwelling on it. But as they drank, he suddenly let out a sigh.
"What’s wrong?" Shen Xuanqing asked. Earlier, when he saw Luo Biao in the alley, he’d noticed his poor complexion, his brow furrowed with sorrow. Even on the way to the tavern, he’d seemed absent-minded and lost.
The waiter brought two dishes: a large pork knuckle and a mix of green bamboo shoots and wood ear mushrooms - one meat, one vegetable. They also ordered a plate of peanuts. The two ate as they talked.
Luo Biao tilted his head back and downed the wine in his cup in one gulp. Sighing, he said, "I don’t mind you laughing at me. It’s just, I’m getting older, and still don’t have a family. It weighs on me."
Shen Xuanqing picked up the wine pot to refill his cup and said, "If you don’t mind, I can ask my mother to keep an eye out for a suitable match. But what kind of person are you looking for, a wife or a fulang?"
Luo Biao smiled bitterly. "Wife or fulang, it makes no difference. Who am I to be picky? But with my reputation as an errand-runner for the brothel, most decent families’ shuang'ers or daughters wouldn’t want me."
After several cups of wine, his pent-up melancholy found an outlet. Seeing Shen Xuanqing, the words poured out. "I was involved with Hongyao. Back then, I was young and foolish, I even promised to earn money to buy her freedom so we could live together. But once you enter that kind of place, even if the madam only paid five taels to buy her, the price to redeem her has now jumped to three hundred."
"Hongyao had a hard life. Pretty faces suffer the most. After her parents died, all she had was uncle with gambling addict. What future could she have? Girls and shuang’er who enter the brothel are shackled there for life. How many ever get out? And yet I made her that promise, only to let her down."
Luo Biao’s expression turned vacant, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.
Shen Xuanqing had never met the Hongyao he spoke of, so he listened quietly and poured him another drink.
"I know… her and I weren’t meant to be. She…" Luo Biao couldn’t continue. He just drank in silence.
Noticing his distress, Shen Xuanqing frowned and asked, "What happened?"
The wine cup clinked against the table. Luo Biao choked back a sob, covering his eyes with one hand. When he finally steadied himself, he rasped, "Three days ago, before dawn, I wasn’t on duty that night. I was asleep when someone woke me and told me she… jumped."
His voice cracked into a sob. He couldn’t say another word, still shielding his eyes, only muffled cries escaping.
Shen Xuanqing’s hand, about to pick up his cup, froze. He hadn’t expected this. After a pause, he asked, "Was she… buried properly? If you’re short, just say the word. I can help."
Luo Biao wiped his tears and lowered his hand. "She’d hidden some silver with me, saved up behind the madam’s back. I added some of my own and bought a coffin. I buried her in the south of the town."
South of Fenggu Town was a mass burial ground, the final resting place for prostitutes and beggars. Some didn’t even get a straw mat, just tossed into a shallow pit that rain would later wash open, exposing the corpses.
Prostitutes had no household registration, no ancestral graves. That was the only place for them.
"You don’t know how happy she was when I promised to redeem her." Luo Biao’s expression was dazed as he rambled on. "When she secretly gave me that money, she told me to save it for us, to buy a house someday, maybe even some land. She’d been in the brothel for years, but she still remembered how to weave and sew. She said I could farm and chop firewood to earn more, and she’d make me new clothes with the fabric we bought."
Suddenly, he laughed. "And that sewing of hers? I knew it well. Even the handkerchiefs she secretly embroidered, you couldn’t tell if the pair of mandarin ducks were ducks at all."
His laughter faded into blank staring, tears welling up again. When he snapped out of it, he wiped his face and said, "The madam only cares about money. I knew it, even if I scraped together three hundred taels, I’d never get her out."
"Pretty ones live decently in the brothel, but that pretty face makes redemption harder. She knew it too. That’s why she chose to end it."
Shen Xuanqing patted his shoulder in silent comfort.
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