"I buried this feeling deep inside me, kept it hidden for so long. No one knew that I, the daughter of a servant, had a crush on the young master. Not even the young master himself knew."
"However, I never expected that the young master felt the same way about me."
"I was seventeen at that time, and the young master was only eighteen. The mistress and the master had already started arranging to choose a young lady from a certain family for the young master to get engaged. The wedding could be held later."
"At that time, the servants were all gossiping about this. They were saying that our young master was so handsome and elegant that only the most beautiful girl could be worthy of him. When I heard this, I was happy. Although I knew it wouldn't be me, I thought I was at least beautiful. So at least I was a bit closer to the standard of the young master's bride."
"But later, the topic of the gossip changed. It became about which young lady had a better family background, which family was more prominent, and which one was more suitable for our young master. Every time they talked about this, I would feel unhappy, but I dared not say anything. After all, I was just the daughter of a servant, someone who relied on this family to survive and go to school. How could I admit that I had feelings for the young master?"
When Hu Jie said all these things, she was extremely calm. She was so calm that it seemed as if she was telling someone else's story. Yang Qian admired her very much. She wondered how much time it had taken for Hu Jie to be able to talk about these things so calmly.
"Later, I heard that the young master often lost his temper and smashed things in his room. I felt so heart - broken. I really wanted to know why. So I pretended to go to clean his room. At that time, the young master had just smashed some things. Coincidentally, Xiaomei, who usually cleaned the young master's room, knew me. She just didn't want to go that day. So I told her that I would go instead of her."
"In this way, I entered the young master's room for the first time. Before that, I had only seen him in the garden, in the yard, or on the swing. I was so excited when I first entered his room. I was a wild girl by nature, and I almost forgot that I was there to clean."
"Fortunately, the young master reminded me."
"Huh? Was it the young master of that family? How did he remind you?" Hearing this, Yang Qian was quite curious.
"How did he remind me? Hahaha, guess, guess how he reminded me." Hu Jie burst out laughing. "You'll never guess. I'll just tell you."
"At that time, I was standing in the middle of the room, cleaning and scolding at the same time. I was saying things like 'What's wrong with this young master? Why did he smash so many things? These are such nice things. He's really just wasting his money' and so on. I don't really remember the exact words, but it was just a bunch of scolding about the young master."
"At that time, I thought the young master wasn't in the room. Since I had never been there before, I didn't know that the young master was not only there but also recording my scolding. When I had scolded enough and stood there to take a break, I suddenly heard my own voice."
"It was my scolding of the young master, every single word was recorded. I was so scared at that time. I thought there was a ghost in broad daylight. Although I was wild - tempered, I was still a girl and I was really afraid of ghosts."
"I remember I just squatted there on the spot, shouting 'Ghost!' and so on. As I was shouting, I heard a soft laugh and felt a shadow covering my head. At that moment, I just thought 'It's over, it's over, the ghost is here'. Then I felt the 'ghost' squat down. I buried my head even lower and covered my hands even tighter."
"Who would have thought that I felt something tap my head. At that time, I thought this 'ghost' was really annoying. It wouldn't just give me a good scare all at once but instead scared me little by little. It was out of this anger that I looked up and stared at the so - called 'ghost' in front of me. Who would have thought that when I looked up, it was actually the young master."
"Haha, really? It's such a coincidence. I didn't expect such a thing to happen." Hearing this, Yang Qian also thought someone was playing a prank, but she never expected it was the young master of this family.
Hu Jie continued to sink into memories. Her thoughts drifted back more than twenty years ago, to when she was seventeen...
She still remembered that when the young master tapped her head with the recorder, Hu Jie looked up with her big, watery eyes. From then on, those eyes were imprinted in the young master's mind for many years.
"You're really too much. Just because you're the young master, you can bully people like this?" Hu Jie said while wiping her tears. Then she remembered that she was there to clean the room, so she started to tidy up.
She didn't know why, even though the young master was the one she liked, after what had happened, Hu Jie was really angry. In the following years, Hu Jie often thought that if she hadn't been angry and cried at that time, if she had been as respectful as other servants in the family and always showed respect to the young master, maybe what happened between her and the young master later wouldn't have happened.
She remembered that day, she cleaned the room in a huff. During the whole process, she didn't even look at the young master. No matter what the young master said to her, she didn't say a word. If she really couldn't avoid him, Hu Jie would pretend to be respectful but actually annoyed and ask the young master to get out of the way.
The whole afternoon was quite harmonious. The young master would let out a soft laugh from time to time, as if he was in a really good mood. And she, by the end, wasn't really angry anymore. But she thought she had been angry for so long and it would be hard to stop without a proper excuse. So she just pretended to be angry. When she heard the young master's soft laugh again and thought about what the young master had done just now, her initial anger grew even stronger.
Unexpectedly, the young master really took Hu Jie's anger to heart and would "bother" her from time to time. Hu Jie still remembered what the young master had said at that time:
"Don't run away. I'm here to apologize to you. It was my fault. I've deleted the recording. Is that okay?"
"Don't be angry. It's all my fault. I didn't mean to scare you. Do you want some chocolate? I brought this chocolate for you."
"Don't be angry anymore. I've apologized to you so many times. Isn't that enough to show my sincerity? Stop being angry. Look, I brought you this flower. Isn't it beautiful? It smells so good."
"..."
Just like this, time and time again, with boxes of chocolate and bouquets of flowers, the feelings that Hu Jie had secretly hidden started to surface little by little. After being hidden for so many years, once the door was opened, they came out like a torrential river, continuous and unending.