The Fugitive's Wife (7): That Night at Winter's End
That night at the end of winter, I lay pressed close with Seom-a and Liu Fei in a narrow room thick with the smell of straw. There was only one blanket, hopelessly small for three people to share. The shape we formed was Liu Fei in the center, Seom-a on the left, and me on the right—a perfect 川 formation. Still, human warmth never lies. Huddled together like that, the bone-deep chill of the night felt just a little less biting.
“...Lady Lü.”
Seom-a’s voice rose cautiously from the darkness.
“Are you uncomfortable at all?”
“No, it’s not that…”
After a brief hesitation, Seom-a turned toward me.
“I truly am grateful.”
“Come now, it’s nothing. You don’t have to keep saying it.”
“But…”
Seom-a’s voice trembled softly, as though she were swallowing a sob.
“Lady Cao.”
I met her eyes for a moment, then shifted my gaze to the ceiling.
“We’re in the same boat. Both marked by the magistrate because of the same man, both facing threats to our property. Even if it weren’t about your house, staying together is safer and more practical.”
“Practical…”
“Yes. If something happens, we can respond more easily, and we save on firewood. I didn’t accept purely for sentimental reasons.”
“……”
Lady Cao offered no reply.
Ah…
A wave of regret hit me. My previous-life corporate tone had slipped out again. A simple, emotional We’re family, aren’t we? would have been enough here. Feeling awkward, I quietly turned my head away. That was when Lady Cao’s wet voice reached me once more.
“Even so.”
Her voice shook in tiny tremors.
“I was happy. When you called me family, Lady Lü.”
“……”
I couldn’t say a word. I simply stared blankly at the stains on the ceiling.
Family, huh…
In my previous life, I had been brutally lonely. Thirty years old. A perpetual mid-level manager. Romantic cells completely extinct. The only friends I had were drinking buddies who only called when they wanted to go out. After moving out on my own, the only things waiting in my Seoul one-room apartment were cold delivery food and dust-covered history books.
This isn’t so bad, actually.
But now Lady Cao and Liu Fei were beside me. These two people truly depended on me. They trusted me. That truth felt somewhat heavy… yet somewhere deep inside, it was warm.
“Lady Cao.”
“Yes.”
“I’m happy too. That you’re my family.”
“……”
“Rather than shivering alone in the cold… it’s much better to shiver together as three.”
Silence settled over us. Seom-a said nothing more. She simply steadied her once-rough breathing, calming it little by little.
“Kuu…”
Beside me, Liu Fei’s lazy snoring had been drifting out for some time. A face that knew nothing of the world, somehow resembling Liu Bang. On a night when only I could not sleep, I studied the boy’s chubby profile for a moment before blankly turning my eyes back to the ceiling. The yellow mold stains above looked, for some reason, exactly like Liu Bang’s sly grin tonight.
Family.
Historically, around this time Lü Zhi gives birth to a son—the future Emperor Hui of Han, Liu Ying, who would succeed Liu Bang as the second emperor. And Lü Zhi shows that precious, frail child the “human pig” she herself created. The horrifying result of cutting off her rival Consort Qi’s limbs, gouging out her eyes, burning her ears, and tossing her into a pigsty. Shocked by the sight, Liu Ying loses his mind, abandons state affairs for pleasure, and dies young. In the end, Lü Zhi’s bloodline is severed.
After that, Empress Lü herself falls completely into depravity, attempting to create a world ruled by the Lü clan.
That was the fixed history. The future I knew. And right now, sleeping peacefully beside me was the very illegitimate son Lü Zhi would have wanted to kill by any means necessary.
A child, is it.
I quietly reached under the blanket and took Liu Fei’s small hand. The warm, soft temperature only a child could have. A small, bony hand that had learned far too early about the storms of this chaotic age. I savored that warmth for a moment, then released his hand and gently closed my eyes.
…I don’t know.
What exactly was it that I didn’t know? Whether I wanted a child? Or whether a thirty-year-old man who had lived his whole life as a male could possibly become someone’s mother?
I just don’t know…
No matter how much time passed, I could never identify the root of that uncertainty.
December drew to a close and the new year arrived. On the Qin calendar, it marked the beginning of the First Year of the Second Emperor, the end of the Thirty-Seventh Year of Shi Huang. Yet the turning of the year changed nothing about my life. It was still cold, still a life on the run, still walking on thin ice. The only difference was that I now began each morning with a bowl of warm porridge prepared by Cao Seom.
“I’ll be back.”
With farewells from Cao Seom and Liu Fei, I left the house and, as usual, slipped bribes to the soldiers guarding the gate.
“Thank you for your hard work. The weather is cold—please buy yourselves some warm soup.”
“Haha, yes. Thank you again today, ma’am.”
The soldiers no longer even asked where I was headed. Their eyes now tracked only the bundle of coins in my hand. I pulled my collar tight and stepped onto the main road. My destination was the well at the village entrance—the only place one could do laundry even in this bitter cold, and the information hub where every rumor in Pei County gathered and scattered. In modern terms, it was essentially Pei County’s mom café.
“Oh my, if it isn’t Lady Lü. You’re out early today.”
Five or six women had already gathered at the well. All of them were associates of our Lü Clan Trading Company, bound by subcontracts to weave straw shoes or twist ropes.
“I woke up a little early. Hello, everyone.”
I greeted them with a bright smile, set down the water jar I had brought, and naturally slipped into their circle.
“It’s cold again today. My hands are going to split open.”
“You can say that again. This winter is especially vicious.”
“Are you all right, Lady Lü? The path in front of your house has gotten terribly rough.”
Along with the rhythmic thumping of laundry paddles, everyday conversation began. Typical auntie talk of this era—what their husbands had done, what their mothers-in-law had said. I chimed in at the right moments and waited for my timing. Soon a natural lull fell over the chatter.
Now.
Pretending to draw water, I casually dropped my bait.
“By the way… has Lady Zhou been doing all right lately?”
“All right in what sense?”
“About her husband’s situation.”
“……Ah.”
She was the wife of one of the prisoners Liu Bang had been escorting. The charge had been the classic livelihood crime—tax delinquency to pay for her son’s medicine. Lady Zhou’s expression clouded for a moment, then she let out a deep sigh as if remembering I was Liu Bang’s wife.
“Nothing has changed. She’s living only for her children these days.”
“I see. …That’s a relief.”
“A relief?”
When I deliberately let my words trail off, Lady Zhou frowned and reacted immediately. I flinched as though I had spoken out of turn.
“Well… the truth is…”
I glanced around once, then leaned in and lowered my voice.
“…Not long ago, the magistrate visited our house. And not in official robes, but in plain clothes.”
“What?”
Lady Zhou’s voice rose at the end, clearly surprised.
“Plain clothes?”
“To Lady Lü’s house when she was alone?”
The other women’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. It seemed they had all been eavesdropping on the conversation among “the wives of criminals” while pretending otherwise.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Playing the tragic heroine, I lowered my eyes anxiously and let a faint blush rise to my cheeks.
“He… said to me. Let’s get close. Let’s comfort each other’s loneliness, just the two of us…”
Get close. Was there any phrase more ambiguous, yet more clearly laced with desire?
“The magistrate said that to you, Lady Lü?”
“Oh my goodness…”
“Even so, to a young married woman…”
The women covered their mouths and began to whisper. Bad rumors about the magistrate had existed for some time—frequenting gisaeng houses, molesting female servants at the government office. But this was on another level entirely. A man in power had personally visited a married woman stripped of her husband’s protection, threatening and attempting to violate her. To these women who had sent their own husbands off to corvée labor or battlefields, it was an existential terror that could one day become their own reality.
“How can a person do such a thing…”
“What on earth is he thinking?”
“A beast worse than an animal!”
The mood instantly ignited with anger. Even setting aside the “lonely married woman” frame, I was Lü Zhi of the Lü Clan Trading Company—the benefactor who provided them with work and income during this harsh agricultural slack season. And that magistrate pig was trying to lay his filthy hands on their grateful Lady Lü through improper means.
“I’m telling my husband about this later.”
“Me too. We need to watch out for each other at least.”
Clear hostility began to surface amid the women’s murmuring.
Good. The spark has been lit.
I clenched a fist in my mind. Then I looked up, eyes glistening with unshed tears, and gazed at them all.
“Still, the magistrate graciously said he would give me time. That he would wait for my judgment… for my wise decision…”
This part was one hundred percent pure truth, without a single lie. But in the minds of the women already burning with rage, those words were undoubtedly being translated into something entirely different.
“Oh, you poor thing…”
“It’s all right, Lady Lü. You don’t have to say any more.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll keep our eyes wide open and watch over you.”
The women approached with devastated expressions and patted my shoulders. In their hearts, “what is the actual truth” no longer seemed important. Only one thought now circulated among them: The magistrate is a son of a bitch.
“Thank… you.”
I lowered my head deeply, voice trembling as though I were pitiful.
It’s going to be even easier than I expected.
Beneath the sleeve covering my mouth, a tiny smile had formed.
March. The wind sweeping down the ridges of Mangtang Mountain no longer carried blades sharp enough to slice flesh. On the black branches of the old plum tree beside the well, white flower buds had burst open like popcorn. Those delicate petals, blooming before the snow had even fully melted, shone brilliantly beneath the early spring sunlight.
…Is it already March?
I muttered blankly while pulling up the well bucket. It had already been three months since Liu Bang caused his incident and fled. I stared dazedly at the now-warmer sun for a moment, then lifted the water-filled bucket with all my strength.
“Hoo.”
Survival muscles bulged. Even on Lü Zhi’s slender arms, respectable definition had begun to form.
It really was a hellish winter…
So many things had happened in the meantime. Even amid the chaos, the magistrate persistently sent people to test my mood. He never did anything as stupid as coming himself, but the subtle coercion and threats continued. Cao Seom and Liu Fei still lived in our house, sharing a single blanket with me in a strange sort of cohabitation. Liu Fei now called me “Big Mother” and followed me quite well. Xiao He was still burying the magistrate under mountains of administrative paperwork every night, and the rumors I had planted at the well now covered all of Pei County like a thin mist. But the most important achievement of all was this:
The long, twenty-four-hour close surveillance had finally ended!
The soldiers no longer stood guard in front of our gate every single day. Instead, every three days a low-ranking official would quietly appear, confirm with his own eyes that I had not fled, and then leave without a word.
Rumors really are terrifying.
A few days earlier, Xiao He had subtly informed me. The rumor I had spread had traveled in circles and finally reached the magistrate’s ears. Because of it, he now watched his every move when deploying people, seeking confirmation before acting. In other words, that stubborn pig had finally started reading the room. And if one thought about it differently, it was a sign that someone above the magistrate—the governor or the county inspector sent by the court to supervise him—had begun to notice something and move.
That must be why surveillance on me was quietly withdrawn. It would become troublesome if rumors of “special surveillance” spread too widely.
Everything was proceeding according to plan. I stretched with a pleasant groan. Roughly four months remained until the Chen Sheng and Wu Guang uprising. When that time came, the magistrate would be finished. The people’s long-suppressed rage would erupt like a volcano. And Liu Bang would—
“Lady Lü!”
An urgent shout. Xiahou Ying’s voice sliced through my peaceful train of thought.
“Lord Xiahou?”
At this early hour? I tilted my head and looked down the dirt path. Xiahou Ying sprinted toward me at tremendous speed and stopped, breathing hard.
“Huff… huff… Madam!”
He glanced around nervously, then pulled something from his chest and held it out. A thin bamboo slip wrapped in dirty cloth.
“A letter… has come for you, Madam!”
“A letter? From whom?”
“From my elder brother… Brother Ji sent it!”
“……Pardon?”
Ji. Meaning Liu Bang had sent it? …That man had written it himself?
Thud—!
Strength left my fingers. The water bucket slipped from my grasp and crashed to the ground. Cold well water instantly soaked the hem of my skirt. An icy chill climbed my ankles, but I had no attention to spare for it. News after three full months. A trace of the man whose fate—whether he was dead or alive, whether he was eating properly, whether he had frozen to death—I had not known at all.
With trembling hands I accepted the bamboo slip Xiahou Ying offered and opened it.
Zhi, take a look.
— From your husband —
The very first line was written in handwriting that was all too familiar… and horrendously bad. It was unmistakably Liu Bang’s.