Chapter 15: Variable

Wen Ru was completely unaware that she had given herself away. Her mind was solely focused on not making Fu Jizhou feel embarrassed or disappointed because of her careless words. The poor little antagonist had suffered so much in places she couldn’t see. Bringing up past events to poke at his wounds, even if unintentional, made her feel very apologetic.

When she moved the round-backed armchair to the side of the writing desk, she found that Fu Jizhou had already made space for her. She pushed the chair in and sat down beside him.

As she sat down, she couldn’t help but turn her head to look at Fu Jizhou, who was burying his head in writing and not giving her a single glance. In the sunlight filtering through the window lattice, the fine down on his face seemed to be wrapped in a halo. The small person looked incredibly obedient.

For some reason, seeing him like this always made her want to laugh.

Hearing her sudden laughter, Fu Jizhou buried his head even deeper, gripping the brush tightly. He wrote down a character, but as soon as he finished, he realized he had written it on the next line. Immediately frustrated, he bit his lip.

“Alright, alright, don’t be upset. I’ll teach you.” Wen Ru poked his shoulder with her right index finger, while her left hand picked up the book from the desk and briefly flipped through it.

The book Tao Hong and Tao Lu bought was a printed version. Probably for the sake of brevity and ease of copying, they chose a version without punctuation or annotations.

Flipping through it from beginning to end, Wen Ru was somewhat shocked. She hadn’t looked at “The Great Learning” for many years, and in her memory, it only had about two hundred characters. It turned out that was probably because they only studied a part of it in class. If he had to copy the entire book five times, that would be too much. If she had known earlier, she definitely wouldn’t have agreed on the spot. But this fool Fu Jizhou, when he got the book, started copying without saying a word.

“Liu Xiansheng only taught the first two small sections recently. Copying these two sections will be enough.” Wen Ru laid the book flat in front of Fu Jizhou and continued before he could object, “Let’s add punctuation first. I’ll read a sentence, and you draw a small circle next to it, okay?”

Fu Jizhou nodded with the brush in hand.

“The way of great learning consists in manifesting one’s bright virtue, consists in loving the people, consists in stopping in perfect goodness…” Wen Ru leaned over, reading to him sentence by sentence.

A warm breeze gently brushed his ears. Fu Jizhou felt sweat breaking out behind his ears, on the back of his neck, along his spine, and on his palms. But he didn’t dare let his mind wander, fearing he might not hear Wen Ru clearly and be thought stupid by her.

The two spent a quarter of an hour reading. Wen Ru not only helped him add punctuation but also roughly explained the meaning.

When Fu Jizhou saw that the punctuation had been added to the end of the two small sections Wen Ru had just explained, he felt relieved, but also a bit disappointed. Sure enough, as soon as she finished, Wen Ru stood up. Fu Jizhou nervously looked up at her.

“I’m going to get some tea. Do you want some?” Wen Ru walked around the desk to the teapot, poured herself a cup of tea, and only after drinking did she realize the tea had cooled.

Fu Jizhou nodded, “Mm.”

Thinking that drinking cold tea in autumn wasn’t good, Wen Ru took the teapot and went out, intending to check if there was any hot tea in the small kitchen.

Seeing her walk out, Fu Jizhou anxiously stood up, then heard Wen Ru asking the servant outside, who had just woken up from a nap, for hot tea. Only then did he slowly sit down, turn the book back to the first page, spread out a clean sheet of paper, and start copying. This time, writing was indeed much easier. By the time Wen Ru returned, he had already copied half a page.

Wen Ru placed the pot of hot tea on the small table by the soft couch, poured a cup for Fu Jizhou to cool, and then simply sat down on the soft couch herself.

Fu Jizhou paused his writing to glance at the empty round-backed chair beside him. His eyelashes drooped slightly for a moment before he continued writing.

While waiting for the tea to cool, Wen Ru noticed a book lying face down on the small table. Curiously, she picked it up, briefly scanned the contents, then turned to the cover. Seeing the four characters “Wen Family Rules” on the dark blue cover, she couldn’t help but feel both amused and exasperated.

Where did this old book come from? She searched through Wen Jinyi’s memories but couldn’t find any trace of this book. Perhaps even Wen Jinyi didn’t know her family had such a book of family rules.

Perhaps because this copying wasn’t as nerve-wracking as before, Fu Jizhou was able to pay some attention to Wen Ru. Hearing her sudden soft laughter, he looked up and saw the book in her hands. He quickly lowered his head, his cheeks flushing slightly.

Wen Ru smiled and carefully reread the page that had been face down earlier, pondering it, and felt that the Wen family’s principles were quite upright.

In a female-dominated country, men’s status was naturally inferior to women’s. Due to men’s physiological characteristics, it was too easy for women to obtain male reproductive resources. Therefore, men, whether married or unmarried, were extremely easy to abandon. However, the Wen family ancestors believed that since they did business with both women and men, they couldn’t disregard men’s feelings. Moreover, as merchants, keeping promises was fundamental. Wen family descendants could not tear up any marriage contract unless they were without women, licentious, or causing harm.

Wen Ru put the family rules aside and picked up a stack of books next to it. Biographies of Virtuous Men? Admonitions for Men? Instructions for Men? As Wen Ru looked through them, she could barely contain her laughter, almost rolling on the couch.

“What’s wrong?” Fu Jizhou looked at her with puffed cheeks, feeling a bit angry at her joking attitude towards those books, especially the Wen Family Rules, that page.

Wen Ru shook her head, pushed those books aside, picked up the now-cooled tea, and walked over to Fu Jizhou. Seeing that he was holding the brush and couldn’t easily drink, she simply reached out, intending to feed him the tea, just as Fu Jizhou had fed her water before.

The air in Fu Jizhou’s puffed cheeks immediately dissipated. He lowered his head, lightly sipping from the rim of the teacup, drinking the warm tea in small sips.

“Where did you get all those books from?” Wen Ru asked him with a smile after watching him finish drinking.

“I have to attend classes at Zhulan Pavilion in three days,” Fu Jizhou obediently answered. Because he had been sipping the water, his lips were wet and glistening.

“I see,” Wen Ru took a clean handkerchief from the table and wiped his lips. Seeing Fu Jizhou lifting his head, looking at her with eyes like those of a little deer, she couldn’t help but feel her heart soften. She continued, “Just learn it roughly, no one lives exactly according to the words in books.”

Logically, Wen Ru shouldn’t have said this. As a small screenwriter, her principle when adapting scripts was not to make major changes to the author’s background settings and character personality settings, only making minor additions. She always felt that each story was a dream created by the author, and if she didn’t share the same dream as the author, but instead added a lot of “I think,” “I feel,” “this is more correct,” then the dream would lose its original meaning.

Since transmigrating into the book, Wen Ru had been doing just that. She quickly adapted to this place, not interfering with any existing rules here. Having grown accustomed to male advantages, wasn’t female dominance and male inferiority interesting too? As a male in a female-dominated country, it was reasonable and natural to seriously study male admonitions and instructions.

But seeing the little antagonist looking at her so innocently, purely, and trustingly, she felt some guilt in her heart and couldn’t help but want to subtly help him open a small gap in this cage.

Perhaps she didn’t realize, or perhaps she had long anticipated, that Fu Jizhou couldn’t possibly understand her vague words. Fu Jizhou indeed thought of something else.

The page in the Wen Family Rules about not tearing up marriage contracts without reason was deliberately placed face down on the small table for Wen Ru to see. He wanted to use this to hint at his attitude, that he wouldn’t think about breaking off the engagement anymore, and to ask if she could forgive his initial impulsiveness and continue to fulfill the marriage contract in the future. But Wen Ru, after seeing it, said there was no need to live according to the words in books.

In an instant, endless unease washed over him. His marriage contract was no longer in his hands.

Wen Ru didn’t seem to be the type to strictly adhere to family rules, and Madam Wen had also said to put the matter of the engagement aside, that it would be fine to become siblings with Wen Ru in the future…

So, had this marriage, which was originally set in stone, become a variable in his life due to his ignorance and impulsiveness?

Fu Jizhou lowered his head and silently copied the book. Unknowingly, his brush strokes gradually became sharper. In a place where Wen Ru couldn’t see, his eyes reddened, making the deep fear in his eyes appear even more profound.