I didn’t move for a while after Min Shuo had left. I remained sitting – rather crouched together – on the large cushion behind the blue curtain, my arms wrapped around myself – once again paralyzed.

I had imagined my first encounter of romantic intimacy to be… very, very different. I knew that technically none of what Min Shuo had done had been meant for me… but it had nevertheless been my body – and not Chu Hua’s – that he had had his hands all over. The kisses had been weird, but still somewhat exciting… but then everything afterwards…? And the remaining fact that Min Shuo and Chu Hua were siblings! Somehow I felt like the dirt of their illicit bond had rubbed off on to me – whether I wanted it or not.

Once again I wondered whether maybe Chu Hua had escaped from Cathay to escape from Min Shuo. Maybe she wanted to be close to him as little as I did…?

My thoughts and my paralysis were interrupted, when I heard the door to the room open again and light cautious footsteps on the stone floor that I deduced to be my maid’s. I stood up despite my legs still feeling shaky, pushed aside the curtains and walked towards her.

We didn’t speak a word while making our way back to the palanquin and once inside, I didn’t muster the strength to argue when I was told that my plans of going to the Temple were delayed once again, because it was lunch time, during which the temple was closed.

Again I was carried in the uncomfortable wooden thing for an undefined time, until it halted and we climbed out to find ourselves back at the Court Lady’ Quarters. Again my maid went ahead of me leading the way and opening doors for me, while I just put on step in front of the other, struggling to keep walking and my mind free of thoughts.

Whatever was going in Chu Hua’s life, I no longer cared. I didn’t want to know. I certainly didn’t want to be a part of it. I just wanted out. But at the same time my unpleasant encounter with Min Shuo had momentarily stripped me of agency and initiative and like a sheep I followed my maid to where the Lady Rong Chu Hua was supposed to appear next.

I had hoped that I would be lead to my quarters, where I could quietly eat a small lunch, before finally going to the temple, but luck had deserted me: Instead to private rooms, my maid led me down an unknown long corridor and straight into a large room with various low tables and seat cushions – all already occupied by a big group of elaborately dressed women, all eating and chatting away.

The last thing I needed now was to be faced with a large group of strangers, who all ‘knew’ who I was, while I had no idea who they were. But that was exactly what happened next:

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

„Chu Hua!“ called a voice through the waves of chatter around me and I turned in the direction it had come from.

The young woman, who had called ‘my’ name, had to be roughly my age, was wearing an orange and green dress – elaborate and decorated like mine – and also had a red petal mark on her forehead. She was smiling and waving me to come over. I glanced at my maid for any sort of hint on how to react, but the maid had her head lowered to the ground as usual, so it was up to me.

I decided to go ahead and towards the table where the young woman and several others sat. When I had reached it, I took the only free seat cushion.

“What’s with the delay?” the woman in green asked, “You can’t afford to miss meals!”

The woman nudged me painfully below the ribs and I let out a small high-pitched squeal, which caused the woman to laugh.

“What’s up with you?” she said, taking a bowl of steaming rice and beautifully carved vegetables before her, that a servant had placed there a second before.

I didn’t feel ready to hold a conversation with someone who looked like a friend of Chu Hua’s – it just would take too much energy to uphold my façade, so I also reached for a bowl of food and started stuffing myself to excuse myself from speaking.

I picked up a pair of chopsticks and then – in my haste – a bowl of noodles and meat, that was still very hot, so I burned my tongue, but I hid it the best I could and swallowed quickly.

“That’s the right attitude!” said Chu Hua’s friend, “Eat fast, so that you can eat more. You really gotta put on some weight, girl.”

With that she left me alone for the moment and we both shoveled food into ourselves in silence.

The food was amazing and… drippy with fat. But I neither paid much attention to the deliciousness nor did I worry about the calorie count – I had more pressing matters on my mind.

Who were the people here? In what relation did Chu Hua stand to them? Would I be allowed to excuse myself? And if so, how soon?

While eating, I cautiously scanned the room to analyze the situation. The three dozen or so other women all wore clothing about as glamorous and elaborate as mine, so I assumed they had to be court ladies – while the people running around in dark greens and blues had to be the servants and maids. I wondered for a moment, why there weren’t any lords around – but soon concluded that I was obviously amongst the bachelor court ladies, still waiting to marry. Curiously though some had pink and some had red petal marks on their foreheads. Something which I couldn’t quite make sense of yet.

What also caught my eye was that for the first time in my life… I was the skinniest girl in the room. The young women around me were, without exception, curvy at the least and seriously chubby at most. As a hobby artist, I couldn’t help but recall that the statue of the goddess He Xiangu back at the temple also had been arguably curvier than the South Korean beauty ideal and so had the paintings of women on the ceiling in Chu Hua’s bedroom. It was quite obvious that the Cathanese preferred their woman rounder than I was used to back home and I found it strange, yet... oddly fascinating.

“Woah, I can’t eat anymore,” said Chu Hua’s friend and sat down the third bowl that she had emptied.

Back in South Korea she would have gotten picked on for eating those kind of quantities. Had she been my friend back in South Korea, I would have used this very occasion to share some basic dieting tips with her – she was strongly bordering on chubby after all. But this was an entirely different world… one that encouraged girls to eat to their hearts content?

The other three women on our table had also finished eating and had soon engaged Chu Hua’s friend in a conversation. I was full and no longer hungry, but kept eating very slowly to avoid getting completely stuffed and so that I didn’t have to join in.

I cursed the magical language skills that had given me the ability to speak and understand Cathanese, but not the ability to read people’s name off their foreheads. The people right here were probably the ones that Chu Hua spend time with day to day and it would have come in handy to know who was who.

At that very moment a well-aimed mushy something hit the back of my head and caused me to spin around. At first I couldn’t identify who had aimed at me, because the whole table right behind me was roaring with laughter, but then I saw a young woman in a pink-dress – the spoon she had used to flip the something at me still provocatively held in her hand and a triumphant smile on her face.

So many odd and scary things had happened over the past 36 hours that an adult woman – a court lady at that – acting on kindergarten level didn’t shock me particularly. I wasn’t even angry at her. So what? I had some sticky rice in my bun – at the moment I couldn’t have cared less.

It soon became apparent that my attacker had hoped for me have a more aggressive response, because the laughter soon subsided and the smile faded from her face. Instead we just stared at each other, both not having the faintest clue of what was truly going on inside the other’s mind. Finally the woman in pink turned her face away from me and I decided to turn my attention back to my food, too.

The four women at my table were all staring at me, looking irritated.

“Why didn’t you do anything?” asked one of the three sitting opposite of me.

“Wasn’t worth the effort,” I said, shrugging and returning my attention to the food in front of me.

“That was her revenge for the fish in her sleeve two days ago,” said the one, who had waved at me to come over in the beginning, “Kind of a weak comeback, don’t you think? On the other hand it was public.” And she called a servant to pick the remains of sticky rice out of my bun.

One of the three women sitting opposite of me and Chu Hua’s friend leaned forward to whisper: “You do have a revenge plan, though, right? We’ll do something to Wan Ting in return, right?”

Great. Now I knew the name of Chu Hua’s enemy. It seemed like there were a lot of them around. This Wan Ting, the head servant… Min Shuo…

“I’ll think of something,” I mumbled, picking up a crispy egg roll and putting it in my mouth.

To my surprise the women all nodded in agreement, as though I had just sad something very important and wise. It seemed like Chu Hua did have some authority within this inner circle of court ladies. This had to be her clique of sorts.

“You still haven’t told us what you were doing all morning! You weren’t at breakfast and you didn’t come to the dance practice we planned,” said the woman in green next to me. “Are you really going to tell me that you spent your time in prayer and meditation again?”

I finished chewing my egg roll first before I answered – all the while amazed at how the women were all quietly and patiently waiting for me to finish up.

“I was delayed this morning, due to a visit from my brother,” I explained, not wanting to speak Min Shuo’s name aloud, as though a curse clung to it.

“Oh,” said Chu Hua’s friend sympathetically, “Of course. That must have been important.”

I silently wondered whether Chu Hua had confided in her friend or friends that she was having a love affair with her brother. Probably not… I remembered vividly how Min Shuo had clasped his hands over my mouth, cutting off air for me momentarily, when my protests had become loud enough for outsiders to hear. No. This was something to never share. With anyone.

To continue the conversation casually I tried to recall what message Min Shuo had actually came to deliver. About an old lady dying… and a young or another sick person…

“He came to check up on Zhenzhen,” I said, “Enquired how she was doing.”

The women exchanged knowing looks and then looked at me… with sadness in their eyes.

“How considerate of him to enquire on his niece’s well-being,” said the woman in green next to me, “The next Mother’s Day should be soon. Poor Zhenzhen, she’s still so young.”

Niece? Mother’s Day? Was Zhenzhen… Chu Hua’s daughter?

I actually wanted to ask out loud “Do I have a daughter?”, but I knew how silly and suspicious that would have seemed.

I looked around at the woman at my table and could see that one of the women opposite of me was looking especially sad. Without thinking I went ahead and asked:

“Are you alright?”

She looked up at me and sighed.

“I haven’t seen mine in three weeks either. And whenever I do see her I feel like they don’t give her enough to eat. Little princesses just don’t account for as much, as little princes do.”

It dawned on me.

Those weren’t court ladies around me.

Rong Chu Hua wasn’t a lady either. Well, that would be sugarcoating it.

They were concubines.

Right, now I was a concubine.

This realization hit me harder than anything else so far. Harder than the headache from waking up after getting knocked out by Chu Hua’s incense stick. Harder than the head servant telling me that impersonators got executed. Harder even than Min Shuo’s iron clasp around my body.

How could I have been so naïve? I had followed a complete stranger into the wilderness and into a parallel world to get a sense of… adventure. I had tried to dress myself and wandered aimlessly around the palace only to be scolded and threatened for it. My first encounter with romantic intimacy had been a disaster and I had stood powerless in the face of it. And most of all it had taken me until now to realize that I wasn’t some elegant free noblewoman, but royal property. The toy and birthing machine of the crown prince himself, to be exact.

I looked around me. There were more than 30 women in the room. Who needed that many wives? And why didn’t the concubines at least live with their children? Why were they separated?

And yes, apparently ‘I’ had a daughter. I wondered how old she was. How old Chu Hua had been, when…

“I’m not feeling well,” I said suddenly. The lunchroom was suddenly suffocating. I wanted to get out. Fast.

“I’m not surprised,” said the woman in green, “I have never seen you eat that much. Where’s Xingjuan? She’ll take you back! Oh, and your art lessons start soon. Don’t forget about that or Master Zha will be displeased.”

The way back from the lunch room to Chu Hua’s private quarters I felt overall awful. I had eaten way too much and my stomach was hurting as a result. Additionally I had realized that I would be stuck as a concubine for the rest of my life, if I didn’t find a way to escape. On top of all that I could once again not go to the temple, because of… art lessons? Really!? Fate was going to make art lessons stand in the way of my freedom?

After I had dragged myself all the way to and into my rooms, I let myself fall onto a divan and closed my eyes.

“Can I do anything for you, milady?” asked the servant girl, whose name I now knew was Xingjuan.

“Nah,” I said, too exhausted to even use full words.

“Very well, milady. I’ll prepare things for your painting lesson then.”

I loved painting. I had been drawing on everything – paper, tables, walls – since I had been able to hold a pencil or brush in my tiny fist, but I needed to be calm and concentrated to do it. A stomach ache and a head full of worries were the exact opposite of good conditions for getting creative.

I got a feeling that was only too familiar, because I had had it a hundred times over back in South Korea.

I wanted the world to go away - including my aching abdomen.

I wanted it to just go away and leave me alone.

I wanted to drift into some state between awake and asleep inside which I didn’t have to do any thinking or acting.

Nothing at all…