Song Yanxue said, "I was ten that year, and my grandfather hadn't yet advanced to Upper Rank. My nine-year-old cousin had lost her mother, and her father was recovering from an illness, so she came to stay with us. She was sweet and polite, as lovely as a little figure carved from jade, though her clothes were a little worn. I liked her the moment we met. At our first meal, Grandmother had the maid give one chicken drumstick to Grandfather and the other to me, as usual. I put mine in my cousin's bowl. From then on, we lived together, slept together, and ate together. Whenever there was a drumstick, I gave it to her. One day, a few months later, Grandmother didn't give me a drumstick. Instead, she had the maid put mine in my cousin's bowl. This time, my cousin didn't thank me. She thanked my grandmother. I suddenly realized that the drumsticks in our home no longer belonged to me."
"I was very unhappy, and gradually grew distant from her. The drumstick that had once belonged to me kept appearing in her bowl. When she was finally betrothed and was leaving our home, she cried and asked to see me, wanting to understand why I ignored her. I stayed upstairs and silently watched her leave our home, crying into her handkerchief. To this day, I remember her bright red clothes and how violently her shoulders shook."
"Later, the drumsticks returned to my bowl, but I rarely ate them anymore."
"It wasn't until I was sixteen, when I heard news of my cousin, that I cried and cried, and finally understood something."
"It wasn't Grandmother who had given my drumstick to my cousin. I was the one who had given it up."
"I should have told my