“Yes…” he said, his shoulders trembling almost imperceptibly.
Yang Wan watched Deng Ying’s silhouette, crisp and clear against the backdrop of the ancient cabinets.
Inside the cabinets were his garments, with several thin, starched undergarments neatly folded together. Almost all were made of silk, reflecting a cold luster not unlike his skin.
Earlier, Deng Ying had mentioned wanting to buy an outside residence. Yang Wan thought it was a good idea.
But compared to an outside residence, this room by the city moat was what truly put Yang Wan’s heart at ease.
It was just like Deng Ying himself—immaculate, facing away from the daylight. When empty, it was full of shadows, yet never felt gloomy.
With him living here, Yang Wan’s soul could find refuge in this world from six hundred years ago.
Even if everything and everyone beyond these walls departed from her previous thirty years of values, as long as Deng Ying could still take out unstained clothes from his cabinet, light a lamp on autumn nights, and sit with her to share a bowl of plain noodles, she wouldn’t be just a random speck of dust in existentialism.
“Then… may I wear your undergarments?”
She suddenly made this request.
Deng Ying froze for a moment.
“May I?”
She asked again.
“Yes…”
After saying this word, he hurriedly crouched down, took out another set of silk undergarments from the cabinet, and placed them beside Yang Wan.
Outside, Li Yu urged them again. Deng Ying dared not look at Yang Wan anymore, quickly gathered his clothes, and pushed open the door to leave.
Yang Wan lowered her head and unfolded the undergarments Deng Ying had left her—an upper garment with ties at the side and loose trousers, generously sized.
She bent down to remove her shoes, hugged her knees, and curled up in the corner of the bed.
The room was very quiet, with a faint chill seeping through the wall cracks.
Yang Wan could almost feel the cold from the city moat permeating in from all directions.
She couldn’t help but cough once or twice, reaching behind to gently undo the ties of her undergarment.
This was her first time removing the protection of her clothes in Deng Ying’s place. As her arms completely withdrew from the sleeves, the autumn wind through the window gaps raised goosebumps on her skin. She continued removing her undergarment, then bent her legs to undo her silk skirt, pulling her legs out of the embroidered trousers.
Her bottom touched Deng Ying’s bedding, which was covered in cotton cloth and felt somewhat cool against her skin.
But Yang Wan found it comfortable, like that moment on weekends after a bath when she’d just slipped naked into her bedding.
The wind stirred the curtains as the sound of rain began pattering by the window.
Yang Wan sat embracing her arms in the breeze.
She didn’t immediately put on Deng Ying’s undergarments, nor did she immediately cover herself with his bedding.
She sat quietly, watching her own body in the candlelight.
This was a body that had originally died in the winter of the twelfth year of Zhenning.
Once young, fair, smooth, and flawless like jade, but now bearing several light brown torture marks on the waist, abdomen, and thighs. These scars were the only things on this body that truly belonged to Yang Wan.
Yang Wan reached out to touch the scars on her legs.
Even though much time had passed, they still hurt when touched.
Death would end everything, but living meant being covered in scars, and enduring humiliation.
How did women of the Great Ming Dynasty perceive their bodies?
In an era before female body consciousness had awakened, would feudal aesthetics accept these “marks of guilt” left in the prison?
Were they the same as that scar on Deng Ying’s body?
She suddenly recalled that passage Foucault wrote in “Discipline and Punish”: “In the eyes of the people, the cruel methods of punishment were no less barbaric, perhaps even more so, than the crime itself. It made spectators accustomed to the very brutality they were meant to despise. By frequently showing them crimes, it made the executioner seem like the criminal, the judge like a murderer, ultimately reversing roles and turning the punished criminal into an object of pity or praise.”
Such humanity existed in the Great Ming Dynasty too.
At the execution grounds where the teachers and students of Tongjia Academy died tragically, countless people pitied and praised these scholars.
However, this pity did not extend to eunuchs or women.
That’s why Yang Wan wanted to fight back against this era.
But it wasn’t fighting back—it was just a modern person humbly trying to carve out a small space around herself, allowing that tragic personal history to be preserved in her notes more gently. The ending didn’t need to be perfect; as long as Deng Ying could still, like just now, take out clean clothes in his modest room, bathe and change according to the monthly calendar and daily schedule, then return, drink some warm water, keep his ankles warm, and sleep without worrying about tomorrow.
That would be enough.
But Yang Wan didn’t know what she would have to sacrifice for such an ending.
If she was a prophet of this dynasty, then before changing the ending, the first thing she needed to do was kill the prophet within herself.
She was afraid.
So she too wanted a room, to give her that silk-wrapped feeling of shelter.
As daylight faded, it faintly traced her shadow on the ground.
Yang Wan reached for Deng Ying’s clothes, put on the upper garment, and then drew the under trousers over her legs.
The smooth silk brushed past her hips, finally covering the scars on her waist and abdomen.