[Alternate t.i.tle: The Bridal Chamber
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When the young ladies of other families get married, they get carried off in a marriage sedan by their brothers, yet Young Mistress Rong Jiahui of Marquis Zhenguo"s Estate isn"t embarra.s.sed at all that she was instead personally carried off by her groom. Listening to the noise everyone"s making, she"s only grateful that she can"t see everyone"s teasing faces right now.
The procession to send off the bride was ridiculously long. By the time the very front of the group had gone from one Marquis"s Estate to another, the very back of the line was still waiting to start moving.
The procedures for the wedding ceremony are also tragically long; they have to go down the carpet, step over a pot of fire [1], worship the heaven and earth, and enter the bridal chamber. These were all things that Jiahui had experienced in her past life, which spontaneously throws her thoughts and feelings into disarray. However, she only needed to glance at the different people around her before it all cleared up in an instant.
She was sitting in their bridal chamber alone, having driven everyone else out. There was no clamoring of people before her with their audible laughing and cheering. It was so quiet that it seemed like she could hear her own heartbeat.
She didn"t know how long she sat there until she heard the very subtle sound of someone was sneaking in, their footsteps extremely light as if they didn"t want to be discovered at all.
Jiahui knew that she was probably being shy, so she pretended to be deaf.
She quietly waited for the other to take the stupid thing off her head, but she ended up waiting until she was starting to fall asleep. That surname Zhongli still hadn"t moved a muscle.
Feeling exasperated, she speaks up. “Are you taking it off or not? If you won"t do it, I will!”
She started to reach up to lift her own veil.
Zhongli Luo rushed to stop her. “Don"t.”
“Then you hurry up and take it off. If it wasn"t for you saying you wanted to lift it, I never would have worn it. I"m going to suffocate to death.”
She thought of that very hot day in her last life, where she was wearing those wedding robes that looked delicate but were actually quite heavy, along with that stupid thing that weighed a thousand catties covering her head. She"d been stubborn "til the end on that, resulting in her being covered with it all the whole night. She has no idea how she managed to endure it, as now she doesn"t want to suffer even a tiny bit.
Zhongli Luo somewhat timidly lifted her veil. Despite there being yet another cover plastered on thicker than a city wall would be, with lips so crimson that her original face couldn"t be seen at all anymore, she still felt moved by the sight.
As she had slowly, finally, lifted it away, Jiahui swiftly plucked the heavy thing off her head and had Zhongli Luo carry it off to the dresser. She then shed her gold-embroidered outer robe, making her whole body much lighter.
She washed her face, all the cosmetics dripping off and finally revealing her original features. Ah, that"s the way the world is; it"s the look a bride is to have, so there"s countless people with the same face. Were it not washed off, everyone would look the same.
After wiping her face dry, she sat on the bed, picked up the peanuts, longans, and lotus seeds off of the mattress, and started to peel and eat them as she complained. [2] “Ah, Luo-Luo, I was wearing such heavy stuf all day long, but I ate almost nothing! If it weren"t for that little punk Ah-Ze stealing a pastry for me, I probably would have starved to death by now.”
Zhongli Luo was exceedingly distressed upon hearing that. “Should I get a servant to get another pastry first, Jiahui? Or maybe they have some congee in the kitchen?”
She waved it off. “No need, no need, these things will be enough. What they"re supposed to be an omen for has nothing to do with us, anyways, so they shouldn"t be wasted. Come on, you eat some too.”
Zhongli Luo sat down beside her, taking the longan she was handed. Bringing to mind how the two of them weren"t going to be able to have a baby, she couldn"t help but start to guiltily question this. “Jiahui, do you not–“
Jiahui interrupted her before she could finish. “I don"t. You shouldn"t think too much. Is anyone forcing me to like you? I liked you a long, long time ago, and for so long. How could that just turn around and be something else? Even if I know you have a woman"s body, I can only look at you.”
“Then that"s also my fault, for not being honest with you sooner,” Zhongli Luo replies.
Jiahui smiles. “Mhm. Though, that dates back to the last life, so, I"ll blame you for not letting me know then.”
Zhongli Luo stared uncomprehendingly. “What"s that about a last life?”
Jiahui"s mouth curved upwards as she elaborated. “It"s nothing, just a dream I had. I dreamt that I met you in a previous life, but the thing was, I obviously felt a little something for you yet refused to admit it. I ended up I missing that opportunity pretty badly.”
In that life, Rong Jiahui not liking Zhongli Luo was something everyone knew. Her liking Zhongli Luo is something even she herself didn"t know.
But when did it all truly start? Even after so many years have pa.s.sed, there"s still a bit of unsureness about that for her. How is one supposed to meticulously dig into the details of where feelings begin and end? Maybe it"s in her memory from twenty years ago, when she first laid eyes on a thin and weak youth in mourning clothes, and then couldn"t forget her.
Zhongli Luo heart clenched. She stroked Jiahui"s head, her voice soft. “It doesn"t matter. It was just a dream.”
Jiahui grins and nods. “I know,” she responds lightly.
Saying so, she looked at the pot of wine on the table, and went up to it while smiling from ear to ear. Pouring two cups of it, she handed one over to Zhongli Luo. “Here. It"s our wedding night. How could there be any logic in not having a cup of nuptial wine?”
Zhongli Luo had to drink what she was given. Jiahui tugged at her, a traitorous smile on her face.
She hooked the arm that was holding her wine cup at the crook of Zhongli Luo"s own, thereupon giving her a smug look.
“It"s nuptial wine, I said! Drink up!”
Their faces were very close at this moment, lips glistening from the wine. They"d both gotten a bit tipsy, and the entire atmosphere of the room was gradually getting odder.
Jiahui saw the other girl"s steadily reddening face, gulped, and quickly took the wine cup away like a victim fleeing a disaster.
Seeing her uneasy makes Zhongli Luo even more uneasy. She turns her entire body off to the side. “It"s not that bright out. How about we… go to bed a bit earlier?”
Jiahui nods. “We should do that. I"m tired.”
She moved over as she spoke.
However, Zhongli Luo caught sight of a big, white silk kerchief that stuck out like a sore thumb on the brilliant red bedding, and was consequently confused.
Being one who typically asks after what she doesn"t know, she picked up the big kerchief and asked, “Jiahui, is this… a towel?”
Seeing the ‘towel", also commonly known as a nuptial sheet [3], Jiahui suddenly went as red as a cooked prawn and looked at her like she was an idiot.
What the heck. Even if she herself is, in reality, a 30-something old woman, she doesn"t have the nerve to say what that is.
After some hesitation, she clenched her jaw and nodded vigorously. “Yep! It"s a towel!”
Zhongli Luo seemed to understand, but just when Jiahui thought the matter was done and over with, she asked again, “How come the bedding and mattress and curtains are all red, but this towel is so white and out-of-place?”
Jiahui doesn"t want to talk about this anymore. She dredges up a laugh. “It"s just tradition. Ordinary people won"t be able to comprehend something like this. Don"t be so serious. Even if you ask an older woman, she might not know why.”
There"s still a lot of fruits and seeds on the mattress. In order for Jiahui to sleep comfortably, Zhongli Luo wants to shake it out, but that ended up revealing a book from underneath it.
She took it in hand and went to open it, only for Jiahui to come flying at her. “Don"t look at that!”
Her pounce, either fortunately or unfortunately, threw the other onto the bed.
The red-faced girl s.n.a.t.c.hes the book out of Zhongli Luo"s hand. “This… isn"t something a good girl should look at.”
In her last life, the bedding in the bridal chamber had erotic drawings under it, and when she discovered it she nearly had blood spewing out of her nose and through the air. She didn"t expect it to be the same in this one. Couldn"t they have found a different place to hide this? One person finding it is fine, but two is really awkward.
“What is it?” Zhongli Luo asked with some puzzlement.
Jiahui coughed, firmly hiding the book behind herself. “This… this isn"t anything good. I"ll just throw it away.”
After that, Jiahui made to throw it out the window, resulting in terrible accuracy due to a lack of attentiveness where she ended up throwing it against the wall. It then ricocheted and flew back, aiming straight for her face.
Zhongli Luo quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed the book from midair due to fear of her being hurt, and after doing so, her curiosity got the better of her and she flipped it open. She abruptly closed it without really taking a good look, lighting up with a blush. Jiahui wasn"t lying to her. Quickly using a longfeng candle [4] to set a corner of the book on fire, she was then the one to throw it out, and this attempt was a success. She closed the window, face red, and sat back down next to Jiahui.
“Let"s go to bed early,” Zhongli Luo suggested, head lowered.
Jiahui flushes and nods with embarra.s.sment. “Okay.”
Zhongli Luo lied stiffly next to her, not daring to make a move. Seeing her like this has the originally mortified-to-the-extreme Jiahui unable to keep from smiling. What sort of newlyweds act like this?
Newlyweds…
That"s right! Jiahui is alarmed; how could she have forgotten? They"ve now paid their respects to the Heaven and Earth, so now they"re husband and… no, not husband and wife. Would their situation be… wife and wife? Woman and woman?
Regardless of whether it"s wife-wife or woman-woman, newlyweds are newlyweds, so what"s with all this distancing? That in mind, she goes over and leans against Zhongli Luo, who then shifts away and towards the side of the bed. She leans on her again, and the other shifts again. She wasn"t being careful with all that moving, fell off the bed, and faceplanted, taking the blanket down with her.
Before she could get up, Jiahui"s arm came from above and patted her, stroking her head. “What in the heck are you doing?” she asks. “You"re just dodging, dodging, dodging. Whose marriage goes like this?”
When Zhongli Luo once again crawled up, Jiahui looped her arms around her. She"s frequently done this in the past, of course, but the action, in this moment, and for them both, has a bit of a different feel to it.
The slightly distraught Zhongli Luo could now get a hint of Jiahui"s scent, becoming, inevitably, a bit fidgety for a time.
Jiahui is circled around her neck, her sparkling eyes gazing at her quietly. All of a sudden, as if she"d finally set her heart upon something, she opened her eyes wide and proposed, “We—!”
She didn"t get to keep talking, as her sharp-shooting mouth jammed up…
Her lips flattened out into a long, straight line, her whole body seeming to be giving off steam, and she can"t say another word. She believes herself to normally have a thick face, but now she seems like a true ‘little wife" type.
Zhongli Luo blinked, not really understanding why Jiahui"s expression was constantly morphing.
All the words in the world… wouldn"t be as good as just putting them into action.
Thinking so, Jiahui reached out a trembling hand, stuck it to Zhongli Luo"s face, closed her eyes, shut out her mind, and kissed her right on the lips.
The author says: Who said the darling didn"t have a driver"s license~?
The translator says: We all expected ZLL to be the gong. But We Were Wrong
[1] It"s believed – traditionally – that doing this cleanses away evil influences from the bride in time for the marriage.
[2] For those who don"t know the customs; they put these on the bridal chamber bed because it symbolizes fertility. Pointless in this case.
[3] It"s for, uh… confirming the bride"s virginity. Again, pointless.
[4] Just wedding decor. The phoenix represents the bride and the dragon the groom.