The Detective, Mission: Creating a Disguise

That night, Yujia went to sleep with plenty of thoughts on her mind. 

The next morning, she realized that it was that time of the month again, the time where she had extreme mood swings; craved chocolate, an impossible food in this era, to extreme degrees; and solely desired to curl up on her bed with a hot pack to soothe her cramps.

This probably explained why she was so emotionally sensitive the past week. And considering how her period came a full week late this month, Yujia realized that the original Fourth Miss didn't exactly have the most regular cycle, probably due to her consistently poor health. Yet although her cycle came later than she predicted, the good news was that Yujia had a pretty light period, which meant that her experience wasn't as bad as it was in her last life. From her experience in this body, she would only have some cramps on her second day, so right now, she was still okay. 

After asking a maid for the fabric sanitary napkins used during this era, depositing her stained sleeping robes to be washed, and cleaning herself up with her daily morning routine, Yujia found herself feeling quite normal and ready to get on with her day.

The task of going under disguise as a maid popped into Yujia's thoughts again. She thought about Hui'er's face and demeanor, as well as the behavior of most of the maids in the villa. 

Standing in the middle of her room, Yujia practiced a few times the act of mimicking these maids. She copied their posture, the way they kept their heads always bent down, and the way they shuffled their feet. It was very different from the posture and rules Yujia learned from Hui'er, the etiquette of the Fourth Miss. 

Yujia did practice mimicking maids in the past for her past two infiltrations, but now that she was going to be actually talking with the maids and servants, she needed to make sure that her disguise was flawless. She had to get every aspect of the behavior down, from the way that servants looked, to the way they walked, and to the way they spoke. This meant more practice.

In this manner, she passed a decent amount of time perfecting her act before deciding to get breakfast. Except, right before she headed out the door, she caught a glance of her reflection in the mirror. 

Yujia stopped. 

She went right back to the small circular mirror, glancing at her bronze-colored reflection. She narrowed her eyes, realizing that if she was going to be talking to the servants, they were going to be paying attention to her face. Even if they didn't recognize her face, the Fourth Miss's body didn't exactly have the face of a maid. 

Well, sure, she did have a pretty malnourished appearance, but her frailness gave off less of the "hard working but underfed" vibes, and more of the "poisoned by potentially her mother or stepmother" vibes. Or, maybe that was just Yujia seeing too much into the situation, since she knew more of her backstory than any strangers would. 

Regardless of that, though, Yujia realized that her face also had really delicate and dainty features. They definitely looked like they belonged to a young miss, not a servant. 

Maybe she had to do something to make herself appear more like a maid.

Yujia thought long and hard about how she could cover up her face in various ways, including finding makeup to change her features. Maybe she should learn special effects makeup, in some way, to give herself a really large, blooming, purple bruise on her cheek, or a gaping wide scar. None of that tiny flower-shaped birthmark or fading white scar nonsense. She had to make it look very horrifying.

She canceled that idea in a split second, however. It wasn't only because she doubted the makeup of this era and her skills, but also because some ripped scar or pigmented bruise would probably draw more attention to her face than to take away from it. The counterproductive nature of it all made Yujia particularly wary.

Thinking back to the various personal maids she had come across, like Hui'er, A'ling, or Lingsu, those maids did look fairly decent. It wasn't like any of them were ugly. They just kept their appearance plain and clean, without access to any of the pretty robes, accessories, and rouge that all the young misses they served had. Thus, it seemed like the best thing for Yujia to do was to keep away from the makeup. Going as simple as she could, without any extra makeup, might just be the non-solution solution to her problem.

Despite these thoughts, Yujia was still quite insecure about her ability to go undercover as a maid. This time had higher risks than her previous infiltrations, in terms of how much contact she would be making with the people in the villa and the time she would spend there. If she already failed her second infiltration— Yujia didn't forget how terrified she was last night when Madam Zhang looked under the bed— how would she be capable of executing what Madam Zhang wanted without any errors? A single, tiny error would cause her entire plan to fail, since if she couldn't go undercover, then she couldn't get the information she needed. And if she couldn't get the information, she wouldn't get to hear the story and perspective from Madam Zhang.

Basically, it all came down to one thing. Yujia needed more real practice, dealing with real people.

Yujia also had the perfect idea to get some practice in.

A maid, about Yujia's stature, passing by her room, caught Yujia's eye. She called the maid over, and the maid obeyed. 

Yujia declared out of the blue, "Take off your clothes, or—" 

"Sorry?" The maid cut in, taking a hesitant step back, her eyes wide and her jaw dropping. Sure, the two of them were girls, but for this disciple to give her this random command… 

"You didn't let me finish," Yujia protested, folding her arms, "I was about to say, or get me a set of your robes. I need to borrow them for… an experiment."

The maid was still filled with hesitation at this strange demand. Yet, a moment later, she relented, turning to get Yujia a set of her spare robes. After all, she was still a servant, and servants always needed to listen to their masters.

When Yujia got her hands on the maid's uniform robes, a bright smile lit up on her face.

It was time to prank the people around her master's villa, for practice. That was her plan for today.