Didn't Know General Was Female Chapter 9

[Slight translation update: Yu s.h.i.+ now referred to as Mrs. Yu. TL;DR: -s.h.i.+ is a suffix for married women (maiden name retained). Mrs. is only for married women in english.
Anyways, thanks for liking and commenting!]

In the early morning, Rong Jiahui sat by the window, staring blankly countless times now at the mutton-fat white jade hairpin that had been sent back a few days ago. The best jewelry store in the entire capital deserves its status. Gold silk entwines with the white jade in a beautiful design, as refined as if this is how it always had looked.

It looks great.

There weren't many people who knew of Zhongli Luo helping her get her hairpin back, and she deliberately repressed the matter afterwards. It ended up not pa.s.sing into her parents' ears, avoiding them getting some not-so-good ideas and feeling that their adopted son is getting way too close to their daughter.

A boy resolutely jumping into the water just to get a girl's hairpin – the average person knows what that means. What extent could they think it still proper? Though… her parents understand Zhongli Luo's nature, know that this is simply what he does on instinct, and that he'd do the same with someone else – they've been acquainted with him for over a month, after all. That's saying nothing about how she's a somewhat chubby little girl with an undeveloped physique, and she's the only one who's always thought herself a beauty unmatched in Heaven and on Earth.

She turns the pin about in her hand, and through the soft sheen of the jade, just for a vague moment, it seems like she once again sees Zhongli Luo's pretty face.

Oi! What's she thinking?! It's like he fished up her soul instead of her hairpin, how ridiculous! She roughly pinched her own rotund face until there were red marks on it. She tells herself that she's 12 right now, not 24, she should be ashamed thinking so much all day long!

However, she looked at the hairpin and thought pleasantly about it once more, it being what someone got drenched specifically for her sake for. Thinking of her previous life, because everyone knew of her childhood betrothal, she was doomed to have most of all those young n.o.ble sons to not go after and tease her. On the contrary, it was her few talent and pretty double-whammy female cousins that had their doorsteps worn out by the quick steps of matchmakers. For that reason, absolutely no one gives much attentiveness to her at all, and otherwise would not do what that silly boy did now. She started to quiet her mind, but it's really not an unbending future prospect!

But, well, she's a girl. She covers her face as she thinks: What future prospects? After all, in this day and age, a girl's life will have no more than three aspects; someone's daughter, someone's wife, someone's mother…

That's… really crummy. Thinking of that, her heart is- indescribably- quite a bit cold. She doesn't like it, but… she can't do anything about it. Shaking her head, she places the jade pin back into her jewelry box and sighs. She'd only managed to add to her worries again.

Night and day fly by like an arrow and time slips like water, and in the blink of an eye, the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 15th day of the 8th month has come. Their family is seated in the courtyard like so, eating moonish mooncakes.

Rong Jiaze took advantage his dad reciting moonish poems and, with his people parroting his actions, immersed himself in pigging out on the mooncakes. Suddenly, he had a fabulously delicious piece, and after two bites of it, he offered it up with both hands to his sister as if it were a priceless treasure. “Big sis, this one's the sweetest and tastiest. You try it.”

Rong Jiahui looked at the remaining half of the mooncake with traces of saliva on it and couldn't resist swatting him on the head. “Your head's on backwards again, you little punk!”

Seeing that his thoughtfulness wasn't given any room, Rong Jiaze silently continued nibbling upon his mooncake offering with pursed lips.

Mrs. Yu looked at her son eating so dejectedly, she unkindly covered her mouth and stealthily snickered.

However, at the point she saw the unfamiliar gold upon her daughter's hair, she couldn't help but ask, “Jiahui, how'd you get that gold-inlaid jade hairpin? I don't remember you having such a thing among your jewelry.”

Hearing Mrs. Yu's question, Zhongli Luo couldn't help but look over.

Rong Jiahui felt her hair, and after seeing that Zhongli Luo was looking over from not too far away, smiled and explained, “It was just jade, but unfortunately I wasn't careful and broke it a month ago. I could only fix it like this.”

Mrs. Yu is amazed without end. Is this… still her precious, pampered baby girl?

Frugality is nice, but she still lets her heart be known to Jiahui. “Silly kid, you didn't have to do that if you broke it. This is good jade, but it's not that uncommon. The current state of our home hasn't reached where you need to be so frugal. It would invite arbitrary jokes from others if they knew.

Jiahui only smiled, declining to comment.

As her daughter didn't seem like she was listening, Mrs. Yu sighed. She looks at the well-behaved Zhongli Luo currently speaking with her husband, then at her good-for-nothing son who's still ravenously eating mooncakes, and can't help but think. How can her own children be so disobedient and Zhongli Luo obedient. Ai, ‘foster son' is nothing more than a nice-sounding name, this sensible child being not of their own family. It's a shame that her daughter had already been promised to someone else, and she blames that on a certain old fuddyduddy.

Thinking of that, Mrs. Yu casts a vehement glare at Rong Chen. Rong Chen, who had originally been having a heart chat with his “sworn son”, blanked out. He'd only been talking, how had he managed to offend her?

The Mid-Autumn Festival, in regards to all the students, means that they don't have to go to school for three days. Ordinarily, the Rong family's clan studies ‘ten-day's leave' is only three days, which is really not enough time to play around.

However, Zhongli Luo is the kind of person that would prefer to stay and read the unorganized chaos of books in the study even when on vacation, unlike Rong Jiaze, and doesn't need to see anyone from day in to day out. Rong Jiahui found it somewhat embarra.s.sing to go and find him at the very beginning, but after a long time of getting to know him, contrarily swaggered right into his territory all day long.

In the very early morning of the final day of the three free days, Rong Jiahui once again ran off to find Zhongli Luo. The door to the study wasn't shut, long trails of morning suns.h.i.+ne projecting through the threshold. After she ordered the servants to keep completely quiet, she raised her foot and lightly tread inside.

Her movements were gentle as she came up behind Zhongli Luo, whose flowery handwriting was, sure enough, still a bit more beautiful than her own, with really transcendental characters.

“Oof, is this your homework? You said you didn't write in any of those or or styles or anything, so what are you writing in Zanhua [1] all the time for?” She suddenly speaks.

Zhongli Luo, who had never felt her presence, had a big jump of fright, hand jerking, brush making a fierce strike, and the paper suddenly had many thin inky scratches on it. It's said that mouse droppings can spoil a perfect pot of soup, and this, a pretty and proper piece of calligraphy that suddenly had a big line through it, was also ruined.

Jiahui drummed herself on the cheeks, knowing that Zhongli Luo would consider this a misprint. In any case, she's a little woman who is also prepared to both stand proud and tall or bow and submit to someone, so she lowers her head and apologize. “Ah, I'm sorry. I've done something wrong again.”

Zhongli Luo looked at it and felt it was a bit of a shame. She‘d spent a long time writing that.

However, a soon as she saw the wronged expression on chubby little face of the girl in front of her, she immediately didn't care anymore.

She took the sc.r.a.pped paper, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it to the side. “I used to always practice Yan style, but I'm a bit more fond of this one's grace and spirit.”

Seeing that he jumped over the issue, as if he didn't blame her, as always, Jiahui charmingly spit out the tip of her tongue and kept talking. “That… I also like that script's prettiness, but… are you not afraid that others will make fun you?”

Zhongli Luo only smiled, saying nothing.

She thinks it's natural for people to laugh, but when they face absolute military power, they'll have no choice but to swallow it back down.

She laid out a piece of paper again and placed paperweights upon it. When she grabbed her pen to start writing, Rong Jiahui patted her on the shoulder, and finally pretended to off-handedly mention her reasons for coming over. “Brother, since everyone can write in Zanhua, and if we're friends enough… if my teacher wanted to punish me with copying texts again, it would be great if you could help me with it later on.”

That's nothing. Zhongli Luo nods her head. “I can do that.”

She'd barely said her promise and Rong Jiahui reached out to feel about her bookshelf, dragging out a book from it.

Flipping through it, she points out an essay within its contents with a favor-currying smile. “My teacher said to copy this fifty times, and the handwriting can't be sloppy. I have to show it to her tomorrow, and these two days I've barely been able to copy it… twice.”

As she spoke, she also held two fingers up.

Such a long essay, fifty times, no messy handwriting… Zhongli Luo's stunned. The legendary gentle female teacher is actually a bit fiercer than that dull old scholar that loves to strike people's palms. In this moment, she looked at the flowery, dimpled smile of Rong Jiahui before her eyes, and understands that this person is specifically running away from the hole she'd dug to have her jump in herself.

A n.o.ble's word is like a quick horse's whipping. Jiahui carefully and prudently offered a smile, and personally moved a stool over to sit by Zhongli Luo's side. His desk is very large – two or three people could be writing on it and there would be room to spare.

She took out a brush and paper, and after she had barely written a word, noticed Zhongli Luo was still looking senselessly at her and not moving. She elbowed him.

When he returned to his senses, Jiahui raised her face and spoke like a spoiled little girl. “Brother Zhongli, you promised! Go go go, hurry, start!”

Zhongli Luo dazedly agreed, really raising his brush and helping her.

The two of them copy from the sun's rise in the east til its setting in the west, and only then did they do enough for forty-eight copies. Adding those to Rong Jiahui's previous two, they're finally complete.

Jiahui rubbed her aching eyes. After thanking Zhongli Luo over and over again, she giddily embraced the result of two people's day-long labor and ran off with it.

To be more precise, it should be called the result of Zhongli Luo's day-long labor. Jiahui only made four copies. Were she not relying on Zhongli Luo's flying brush, and with her own terrible laziness, she estimates she'd be doing one copy a day.

Looking at her pattern of copying for a while and taking a rest with a cup of water when her hand hurt, or copying for a while and getting hungry and rewarding herself with snacks and pastries for her toil… fifty copies would probably take a month or two.

Zhongli Luo was shaking her painful and sore hand afterwards and it felt like there'd been paste smeared on her eyes, but looking at Jiahui's happily retreating figure, she can't help but chuckle.

She didn't want to eat dinner after this tiring day, and went straight back to her room to fall on top of the bed. But… why does she get the feeling that she's forgetting something?

Must be her imagination. Anyways, sleep comes first.

The next day, as she was the only one who didn't do her homework, she had to carry two casks full of water and stand at the entrance all day long.

Congratulations Zhongzhong! You're already at the stage where you're suffering hards.h.i.+ps so your wife doesn't have to! It's just gonna get worse as you get older! And you're really young right now so you're deffo screwed hahahahahaha

[1] Zanhua Xiaokai (roughly Small Flower-Hairpin Script) – A calligraphic style characterized by smaller than average characters with more artistic, curvier strokes. Historically used primarily by women. I translated it in a previous chapter as ‘little, flowery script' to get across its femininity, but will be referring to it as Zanhua from now on for brevity's sake.