6 Early Blossoming (1/2)

Mingxia let out a sigh and strolled around the house, bored. Unlike her dear sister who has classes packed back to back everyday, Mingxia had little to none, due to her angering all the teachers in town with her obnoxious behavior when she was young. Mingxia smiled as she remembered those times.

From childhood she played around with boys and did dangerous activities such as climbing walls, trees, hiking, playing with knives. Back then she was free and experienced true freedom. So when she was asked to weave beautiful designs on handkerchiefs and draw cute birds she would utterly fail. Because of this she received many negative comments about her, everyday she would hear others say how barbaric she is, how she should have been born a male and such. She hated whoever that said this, who gave them the right to judge her? She was just acting like herself and was being herself. She was depressed for a while but after that she decided that, why not act barbaric? why not act like a boy? So whenever she had to attend classes for females she would purposely aggravate the teacher and provoke them until they quit their job.

She didn't care since she hated being forced to do something.

That fact has not been changed, even now she refused to be forced to do something against her will. It wasn't until later on when she met Ching that she forced herself to learn these lessons. How naïve of her to think that he will like her if she was more feminine and spent countless nights learning to weave, draw, dance and such.

She would remember when her fingers were bleeding from playing the Guqin but she forced herself to continue. Although her fingers hurt she was happy. Happy, yeah she thought she would be happy and maybe even happier when she finally was wedded to Ching but that day never came.

Never.

Now she hated herself for that, she hated how gullible and naïve she was back then. She arrived in front of the plum blossom trees located in the courtyard and remembered that this was Ching's favorite flower.

'They are small and fragile and yet they are beautiful and strong.'

'Just like you.'

She grimaced and looked away from these orchards, she can't believe she had said these childish words to Ching before. She cringed at the thought and walked away but was stopped when a sudden gust of wind blew towards her bringing in a wave of plum blossom petals at her. Her maid rushed forwards with a towel but she waved her hand to signal she didn't need it.

She picked up a petal and let it ride with the wind.

”Small and fragile against the wind but strong against the cold.”

Ironic.