271 Weak Heart of the Detective
Yujia admitted that she felt a wave of guilt whenever she met up outside the villa with A'Yan and brought Lianye along. She felt even guiltier whenever not even twenty minutes into walking through the festival, she pretended to be carried away by the crowd and secretly snuck away.
A part of herself tried to convince her that though she was ditching her friends, she was creating a better situation for them. They wouldn't have to know that she ditched them on purpose. She could already imagine the concern A'Yan might hold the moment he realized her absence, but surely he wouldn't mind it that much. On the other hand, Lianye would surely have plenty of excitement at being left alone with him. She definitely wouldn't mind. Yujia could also imagine her carefully woven lies about being carried away by the crowd, and how she went back to the villa afterwards since she truly did not enjoy crowds.
Yujia realized that up to this point, she had lied a lot. It did make her feel like she was a bit morally twisted, but once more, she justified it with the fact that this entire disguise-detective-agent work was just one big lie. A few more lies wouldn't damage her overall morals.
Thus, a moment later, Yujia was sneaking back into the villa.
Just like A'Yan said earlier, because of the light festival, everyone was gone. The South Courtyard, which was usually filled with servants busying around, was completely silent. Yujia's ears would pick up some background noise from the festival, but other than that, there was truly nobody in the courtyard.
As Yujia made her way to the kitchen, she wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she supposed that any hints would work. Passing by the front door of the kitchen, she picked up a lantern that was sitting by the side, using the faint light within it to see in the evening's darkness.
She moved through the room slowly, looking over everything and stopping to examine some shelves and areas in specific. Besides finding sacks of grain, pickled vegetable jars, bottled spices, and a notebook of records, she really couldn't find anything else. Yujia even made sure to look through the records, reading the pages, but even then, nothing stuck out to her as suspicious.
Clearing the kitchen off her list, Yujia moved onto the other parts in the courtyard. She examined the sheds, the rooms of the other servants, and even the room that she used to sleep in. In the shed, she found a whole lot of hay and stacks of firewood. In the rooms, other than personal belongings which didn't look like they belonged to the villa's masters, she also couldn't find anything else.
Next, Yujia moved onto the East Courtyard. She already examined Xiaoyi's North Courtyard, so she figured that the courtyard where Madam Zhang, the Old Master, and the First Miss lived would be the next best place to investigate.
Obviously, Madam Zhang and Yujia's father were not going to attend the festival. Xiaoyi said that she would, but Yang Qingxia had an introverted possibility, so Yujia knew that the First Miss would not be attending either. Yujia knew that even if she had been refining her spy skills, she hadn't yet mastered the skills of complete invisibility, so investigating those rooms were a no-go. Instead, she chose to check out a small room in the back where some of the personal servants lived.
Using the same lantern as the one she took from the South Courtyard, Yujia first made sure that no one was in the room. Once she was certain it was empty, she quietly crept in and began searching.
Like the previous results Yujia encountered, she didn't find anything too suspicious. There was a glimmering necklace with gemstone beads that Yujia dug up in a jewelry box, but after thinking about the list of items Madam Zhang recorded as missing and discovering there was no jewelry with earthy-colored beads like the one Yujia discovered, she assumed that the necklace must've been either a heirloom, something the owner was gifted, or something that the owner bought on their own. She tucked the necklace back into the jewelry box and quickly left the room.
Outside, Yujia was a bit bummed. She leaned against the wall, wondering if this way of searching for clues was truly unproductive. Her eyes glanced up at the dark, starry sky, and then, they slid over to the side.
To the back of the courtyard, even behind the room the servants lived in, there seemed to be a well.
At first, Yujia thought that it was just any old well. Except then, she realized something crucial:
If they had a well right in the villa's East Courtyard, why had Yujia been forced, a while back, to carry buckets of water all the time, from the well far away in the city and back to the courtyard? Wouldn't that have been a huge waste of time?
She contemplated the idea of the well simply being dried up, but the detective part of her still had a gut feeling that the well was anything but ordinary.
Yujia took a few steps forward, walking right next to the well. There was a wooden cover, which she slid off. She held the lantern in her hand cautiously over the edge, trying to catch a reflection in the water and noticing that there wasn't any shine. The well was indeed dried up.
With narrow eyes, Yujia thought about it for a few more moments. After that, she glanced all over her surroundings again. There was a stack of hay pushed up in the corner. She approached the stack and stuck her hand into the pile, rummaging until they found something with a different texture: a rope.
Yujia's eyes lit up. She pulled the rope out of the stack. Placing the lantern to the side, she used both hands to pull the tangled pile apart. The dusty rope was not any random rope. When held straight, one could clearly see that the rope was tied into a ladder, wooden rungs threading through both sides.
In a few swift actions, Yujia brought the ladder over to the edge of the well. She tossed the ladder down, making sure that she held onto the top rope. The sound of the last wooden rung hitting a solid, dry surface echoed back to her. It fit just perfectly, giving enough spare rope for someone to fasten the ladder and climb down.
This was definitely suspicious, and by far, the most suspicious thing Yujia had come across up to this point.
Her heart thudded in her chest, partially out of excitement that she seemed to discover a major clue and partially out of a bit of fear. She knew that she wanted to climb down the ladder to see what was exactly down there, but was that a good idea? Could she really fasten the rope to the edges of the well tightly enough? What if she didn't, and the ladder fell halfway through? Wouldn't she fall to her death?
It was an unsettling idea. Yet Yujia knew that if she wanted to find any clues, she would have to go down this shady well. It was now or never. She wasn't going to find an opportunity to explore alone as good as this one tonight.
She came to a resolution in her heart. Yujia took a deep breath and began to tie the rope around the edges.
That was when she heard footsteps.
Immediately, Yujia stopped tying, her arms frantically pulling the rope ladder back up. She couldn't even think properly once she heard these sounds. All she knew was that she moved in a flurry of movements— toss the rope ladder back under the hay, blow out the light in the candle, and hide, hide, hide.
But where to hide? This back corner of the courtyard had nothing to hide in!
The sounds of footsteps grew louder and louder. Yujia couldn't think this through anymore.
She threw herself into the opposite corner of the pile of hay, faced the wall, and pretended to be a tree.
She prayed that the darkness would not expose her. She prayed that whoever was coming over didn't have a light, or was blind enough to not notice her. She prayed that the sound of footsteps wasn't going to enter this area she was in.
At the same time, she racked her brain for excuses if she really was caught. What would she say? She was just lost? Or should she immediately beg for mercy?
As she thought, she suddenly realized that she hadn't closed the lid of the well over it. Once she came to this realization, her stress levels skyrocketed by about four-thousand percent.
She was an idiot. An absolute, panicked idiot. Why did she forget such an important detail in the midst of her panic? What was she going to say now?
Yet thankfully, the sound of footsteps stopped, right before they walked behind, into the little back corner Yujia was at. The person who was here pushed open the door to the room Yuja was investigating a few moments ago. They vanished inside, but not before Yujia heard them mutter to themselves, "Why did I forget money for the festival? Ugh."
She was relieved that the person was not here to look at some suspicious wells. She was also not-at-all relieved that the person might still walk over to the back for absolutely no reason as well.
Yujia had approximately three seconds to decide if she was going to keep hiding in the corner or make a break for it, while the person was distracted in the room.
She decided on the latter.
Yanking the lid of the well over it as quietly as she could, then grabbing her blown-out lantern, Yujia ran. She ran for her life, out of the back and out of the courtyard.
Thankfully, the person in the room didn't seem to notice anything at all.
Yujia was already all the way inside the North Courtyard before she stopped to catch her breath.
That— just now— was a horrible, nerve-wracking experience. Maybe Yujia really wasn't cut out for this investigation work, proven by the mess that her brain went through during that brief incident.
It was a pity that she could not investigate the well. Judging by the panic that was still coursing through her, Yujia decided that it probably wasn't also a good idea to go back. She couldn't risk the idea of getting caught.
She glanced at her sweaty palms and the lantern from the kitchen she held. Thinking about her past blunder with the lid of the well, Yujia knew that making careless mistakes like that would never be alright. She had to pay more attention to detail and figure out a way to completely maintain her cool, even in an unexpected and terrifying experience like that.
This meant that she needed to return the lantern she snatched from the South Courtyard back to the place it originally was, in front of the kitchen.
Yujia allotted herself a few minutes to calm her heart first. During this time, she went through everything that happened tonight, making sure that she didn't make any other mistakes or forget any details. She also poured herself a cup of cold tea to soothe her parched lips.
When she thought everything through, Yujia calculated that everything that happened so far probably took a little less than two hours. She wasn't sure how long the servants would take to explore the festival, but she better conclude tonight's investigation around now.
Yujia picked up the lantern and hurried back to the South Courtyard.
Upon making it to the front of the kitchen, she carefully hung the lantern back to the place it was originally at, making sure to also borrow the flame from another lantern to relight the candle within the one she borrowed. After that, Yujia planned to head back to the North Courtyard and call it for the night.
That was when she heard strange sounds coming from the shed in the back.
Yujia paused.
The thief who tried to steal her pendant from her was locked in that shed, previously. At the thought of that, she knew that she had to check the sound out.
Approaching the shed for the side, Yujia had her guard raised, yet nothing could prepare her from the sight she was going to come across next.
Her blood ran cold.
