A Bit of Reminiscing

Yin Xue looked at her master with shining eyes, but Bai Rong turned her head and stared at the dancing flames instead.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl born from a noble family. She had it all—beauty, talent and wealth. Her parents treated her like the pearl in their palms, her friends supported her no matter what she did, her brother would have given her the stars and moon if she asked. To top it off, she was engaged to a boy she grew up with, and he treated her well..."

"That's not a story," scoffed Yin Xue. "That's a fantasy. Real life isn't—"

Bai Rong leaned over and shushed her gently. "Shh. Listen."

"The perfect girl with the perfect life should have had her perfect ending, but then she fell in love with someone else," continued Bai Rong. "The boy was an illegitimate son of another noble family, but he was clever, ambitious, and most importantly, reciprocated her love. Knowing her family would not accept her marriage to someone on a different scale of the social ladder, the girl used her own resources to help him improve his talent and cultivation. He promised to marry her once he became strong enough and—"

Yin Xue cut in. "But he lied. Right? Master, I've heard these storylines so many times I've lost count."

Bai Rong didn't appear impatient at the interruption. "What if I told you you're wrong?"

"Huh?"

"Oh, he married her alright, but the girl's family still disapproved. In the end, they cut their familial ties," explained Bai Rong. "For a few hundred years, the couple were happy. The woman gave birth to a son and they became one happy family."

Bai Rong paused, half expecting another interruption. Yin Xue waited expectantly. Bai Rong let the proverbial hammer fall. "It didn't last. After some time, the man's true personality started to show. He married more concubines, including his wife's cousin, and had other children. In the end, he demoted his wife's rank and her cousin rose as the Lady of the family. 

"Turns out, he and her cousin were plotting against her all along. Their love at first sight was a carefully orchestrated 'coincidence', her husband charmed her while her cousin encouraged her to go for a love that was actually fake. They got her kicked out of her family and voluntarily give them so many treasures—"

When Yin Xue cut in this time, her voice was sombre. "The cousin was always acting out of jealousy, and so when she became the official wife of her lover, the first thing she did was get rid of the original wife. And she succeeded. The end."

"Not the end," corrected Bai Rong. "Our protagonist had one son and one daughter, and she was pregnant at the time. The cousin framed her, then made her own son kill her and his unborn sibling."

Yin Xue gasped. Bai Rong threw more kindling into the fire, numb to it all. Yin Xue suddenly felt like she understood something. "Master, is... is this your story?" she asked tentatively.

"No," answered Bai Rong. "That is not my story. But... I knew that woman. This is a true story."

"Oh. What happened to the woman's daughter?"

"She died."

"Where? How? Did her family kill her?"

Bai Rong shook her head inwardly. 'Little do you know.'

Aloud, she said, "She died a very poetic yet laughable death in a forest of snow and blood. Nobody has seen her since."

***

Silence wrapped its arms around them, a curtain of heaviness falling over the originally light atmosphere.

"What is the lesson learnt?" Bai Rong finally asked.

Yin Xue didn't smile, didn't joke as she usually would. "Love makes us blind?"

"Not just that."

Yin Xue thought for a while and answered, "She shouldn't have trusted her husband? She stayed even when he revealed his real personality. He promised her forever, but he replaced her."

Promised her forever... 

Bai Rong's eyes turned wistful. "Yes... The moral of the story is that she placed her trust in the wrong people. She trusted in love at first sight and she trusted her cousin's sweet, poisonous words. Those words pushed her bit by bit down the road of poor choices, and ruined her relationship with the people she should have trusted—her family.

"Maybe, in their marriage, her husband grew to have real feelings for her, but that wasn't enough compared to what he and her cousin had. Yin Xue, you should know  that in any relationship, the person who is more emotionally invested will always be the one who is hurt more. She loved her husband and son so much that when they betrayed her, it broke her even before she was physically dead."

Yin Xue was skeptical. "How do you know, Master? You aren't the woman in the story."

Bai Rong sucked in a breath. One storytelling lesson was opening up all the jars of pain. "That's enough for today."

She stood up along with her disciple, clasped her hands tightly and said in her most serious voice, "Yin Xue, I will never teach you things that are unimportant. I'm not saying you should be untrusting of everybody—at the very least know who you can trust, and even then, never give out all your trust. Being too invested in something will just make it hurt more when you have to part with it. Nothing lasts forever, so it's better you learn this early on. Don't follow in my footsteps." Don't be weak and powerless and useless like me.

Bai Rong didn't say the last sentence aloud. 

"I will remember this always," Yin Xue said solemnly.

Bai Rong nodded. "The sun will set soon. Go train."

"Yes, Master."