3 Chapter 3: Moving Forward

After saying her piece, Ying Yue sat down beside Zhu Xinya and finally began taking in the extent of her surroundings.

The room she was in was very shabby, with one look she could tell the importance that was placed upon the original Ying Yue. Her room consisted of a bed, if it could even be considered a bed. It was a straw mat on a slab of wood with some sheets and blankets. She had a balled up lump of scrap fabric as a pillow. In one corner of the room was a table, a chair, and broken mirror. Ying Yue assumed this was supposed to be her vanity set, although quite frankly it looked very sad. The mirror was cracked and the chair only had three legs, it was a wonder how anyone could even manage to sit in it without falling over. There was hardly any products on the table, and it looked like most of the perfumes were made by Ying Yue herself, as they were pretty much just jars of water with various flower petals floating in them.

In another corner of the room was a dresser with clothes, although the clothes were more like rags. Even though she was older, she always received hand-me-downs from her younger sisters. As a result, much of the clothes that she had were worn, out-dated and too small. Even the maids within the residence received nicer clothes than what was allotted for her to wear. It really was a wonder how Ying Yue managed to survive this far in life, looking at how poorly she was treated.

Continuing to look about the room, Ying Yue spotted a small box at the end of her "bed." Seeing the box, some memories flowed into Ying Yue's mind. She realized that this box contained all of her most prized possessions, mainly being the things the crown prince gave her. Inside was a small hairbrush, a copper hair-pin, a couple of dried flowers, a few wooden beads, and a small gem left to her by her mother. Recalling all this information, Ying Yue scoffed. The previous Ying Yue really was pitiful to have considered these few items most important to her.

Zhu Xinya watched as Ying Yue looked about the room, seemingly in a daze. She decided she would snap her mistress out of it, and bring her attention back to their current situation.

"Ahem"

Ying Yue looked over to see her maid looking at her with concern. She realized that she must have looked pretty disoriented right now, starring at everything throughout the room. Her obvious lack of attention paired with her injury riddled body, it was a wonder that Zhu Xinya wasn't showing even more concern. In fact, the little maid could even be considered to be restrained, looking at the amount of worry that was apparent in her eyes.

"I'm fine," Ying Yue said, eyes trained on the little maid, "just a little tired is all. If you could, I'd like to take a bath to wash all this blood off me."

"Yes, third young miss, I'll get right on it." Zhu Xinya said, springing up from the bed. Looking at her mistress, Zhu Xinya couldn't help but think she's changed, although she couldn't quite fathom how. Of course, considering the experiences the young miss had to go through, it would probably be even more concerning if she had managed to remain the same, so Zhu Xinya simply shrugged off her concern and went to go draw her miss's bath.

In actuality, Ying Yue didn't really mind the blood all over her body. She had been covered in even more for far longer before, so the blood was the least of her concerns. Really, all she wanted to do was to get the little maid to leave so that she could evaluate her surroundings and her newly acquired body in more depth without arousing too much suspicion.

She decided first she would further inspect the room. She stood up from the bed, and began to wander around. Upon further inspection, she found that the room was even worse than she originally gathered from looking around. The room was very poorly insulated, meaning the room would have been cold in the winters and hot in the summers. On top of this, Ying Yue noticed that there was a bucket full of murky water on the floor. When she looked up, she found a crack in the ceiling. It could be conferred that this water was actually rain water that had seeped through the crack in the ceiling during a storm. Ying Yue couldn't help but sigh. The original owner of this body really was treated like she was worthless.

Ying Yue's attention was drawn back to the box full of the original owner's most prized possessions. Ying Yue decided to inspect these items further, to see if there was anything that could be considered of real value inside. When she opened the box, she was extremely disappointed. Based upon the original owner's memories, these items seemed to have some worth, but clearly she was biased, as these items had come from the crown prince, so she held them in higher regard than they were actually worth. In reality, the only thing that seemed to be worth much of anything was the small gem left behind by her deceased mother.

Ying Yue picked up the gem to inspect it closer, in hopes of identifying what kind of gem it was and how much money it was worth, thinking that she could at least sell it for a silver or two. When Ying Yue picked it up, however, she felt a sharp pain in her hand, followed by something that completely went against her knowledge. The gem embedded itself in her hand, like a worm digging its way into the ground. She watched as the gem moved under her skin, until it stopped on her middle finger. Once there, Ying Yue felt an even more intense pain, as a ring slowly appeared on her finger. Looking at the ring, Ying Yue had yet to fully process what had just happened before she felt a strong force and everything went black.