The Worth of a Girl

The girl walked silently down the worn wooden corridor, each step echoing softly in the stillness of the house. Beneath her bare feet, the floor creaked gently, as if the walls themselves whispered forgotten stories. When she reached the room, she pushed the door open with the kind of delicacy only those who have learned to be invisible can understand.

The room, spacious yet austere, seemed to embrace her with a comforting familiarity.

The bare wooden walls remained cold, like the memories clinging to every corner. Shadows stretched long and still, swaying with the faint rhythm of light filtering through frayed curtains. The floor was covered with straw mats arranged with almost ritual precision. Each folded blanket at the end of the mats was a promise of warmth that never fully arrived.

She walked to an empty corner and sat down, wrapping herself in the quiet. Her entire world fit within that small space, and yet she felt something new — a restlessness slipping through the cracks of the room.

Her life had always been like this: the house, the girls, the māmā, the former apprentices. Everything she knew fit within those walls, repeating itself endlessly, a cycle that never stopped. But that morning, something had changed. Some of the girls who shared her bed were gone.

They had vanished without farewell, without a word.

Rumor said some had left with important patrons, or had been chosen as apprentices to senior courtesans. Others… were simply never mentioned again.

The air had grown heavier, and the murmur of the district — once her only refuge — no longer felt distant, but suffocating.

She hugged her knees tightly, lost in thought. She, the nameless girl, was nothing more than a blurred reflection among the shadows of the place.

The girls in the house received no names until someone decided to give them one.

Until then, they were known only by appearance or talent — labels rather than names.

Long, ink-black hair.

Pale skin untouched by sunlight for years.

And those eyes… deep, strange blue eyes that did not belong in this world. No one ever forgot her after looking into them.

Suddenly, the door burst open, shattering the echo of her melancholy.

> “Sister!” —cried a bright voice, cutting through the stillness.

A girl ran in, her light-blonde hair floating behind her like a sunlit cloud. She threw herself into the arms of the blue-eyed girl with the energy of someone who still believes the world is kind — her embrace a breath of fresh air in the closed room.

The blue-eyed girl smiled faintly, but her sister’s gaze was a small sun breaking through her cold quiet.

She ran her fingers through the girl’s hair, recognizing its softness — the shine that still carried the freshness of youth.

> “Māmā praised your hair,” she murmured softly, her words brushing the air like a gentle caress.

The blonde girl beamed with delight, moving as if she could defy gravity itself.

> “Yes! I practiced so much for today’s presentation. I’m so excited! We’ll be studying with māmā Shīshēng. Did you know she trained the elite courtesan we saw this morning? She was so beautiful!”

The blue-eyed girl listened in silence, watching how her sister’s words filled the space with a brightness she didn’t have.

She knew that for māmā, beauty was never merely about appearance. True beauty, to her, was the power to captivate — to leave a mark in the memory of those who beheld you. True beauty was something that could be killed, or devoured by time.

At that moment, another presence stepped forward from the dim corner of the room.

A new girl.

Her skin was even paler than the others’, almost translucent — like the finest porcelain. Her hair was dark and straight, falling with deliberate precision, and in her gaze shone a mixture of pride and superiority.

> “Yesterday was my first day here,” she announced, her voice light and filled with an untested confidence.

“Very few have been bought recently, but I… I was left here by a merchant at a price far higher than any other apprentice or courtesan this year.”

The two girls exchanged quick glances.

There was something in the way the newcomer spoke that could not be ignored — a small but evident gesture: the way her chest lifted slightly, as if her words were merely the opening act of a grander scene.

> “I heard māmā speaking about it this morning,” the newcomer went on, her tone swelling with pride.

“She said my price was higher because I’m special.”

The blue-eyed girl didn’t look at her. Her gaze rested on the floor, where shadows moved like memories of something long gone. The blonde girl, quick to sense others’ feelings, grinned playfully and whispered:

> “Sister, I think you’re a little jealous.”

The blue-eyed girl frowned, but didn’t answer immediately.

Her mind was full of thoughts that had nothing to do with simple rivalry.

At last, she spoke — her voice low, almost a whisper, as if her words might shatter the still air:

> “You’re wrong. It’s not jealousy. I just think her presence… is too loud.”

The words hung in the air — heavy — and for a moment, time itself seemed to pause. The new girl met her gaze, but her expression hardened.

The others felt it too: the tension settling in like a silent current beneath calm waters.

The blue-eyed girl didn’t look away. She knew now that in this house, they were not only taught to be beautiful or talented.

They were taught to stand out.

To survive.

And she had just learned that beyond dance, music, or poetry, there existed another, colder contest — the battle for attention, the struggle for a place in a world where only what is remembered has worth.

The two new rivals had found each other.

And what would follow would not be an easy battle — not for today, but for a distant, inevitable future.

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(Page 22 of The Courtesans’ Book , Chapter 4: “Do Not Weep for Me”)

Signed by the Blue-Eyed Girl

> Do not weep for me, you who have a home,

your blood-bound ties, your fields of rice.

I was born without a map, without a mother’s arms,

without a single soul who thinks I have a voice.

> I learned the body is both coin and bridge,

that the soul’s a luxury I cannot afford.

So do not weep, nor feign to be