They Called Me a Coward, My New Master Asked for Lessons novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Coward's Welcome
Publicly stripped of her academy badge for pulling Luo off a breaking bridge, Ji hands the academy its sword and chooses Shen's mocked school.
Ji Yanshu's new master asked whether the word COWARD came with a chair.
It had been painted across the academy's dismissal board in thick red lacquer.
Ji had spent the morning rubbing the first letter with her sleeve.
The letter had not faded, but her patched indigo sleeve had turned permanently red.
Her old classmates filled the gate yard and left a wide space around her.
Only Luo Meixun, her younger fellow disciple, stood inside that space on one good ankle.
Ji had hauled Luo off a splitting trial bridge yesterday, one board at a time.
The academy called that abandoning the trial, and it had painted the board before hearing her.
Now the gatekeeper stood with his palm out for her embroidered badge.
Beside him, an older stranger studied the board with her head tilted.
She had mud on both hems and half a steamed bun in her pocket.
"I only ask because a title usually comes with a chair," she told the gatekeeper.
"It comes with a badge collection," he said.
"Then I shall interview her sitting down," the stranger decided.
The gatekeeper fetched a low stool from his gatehouse before he had decided to.
She pressed one brown shoe against each leg of it before she sat.
Ji had been raised on masters who descended from clouds, and this one tested furniture.
"Shen Qiaolian," the woman said, "master of the Low Step school."
Ji knew that school as the crooked hall beside the river.
Shen broke the bun and handed the larger half to Luo without looking.
Luo took it in both hands, and the hands were shaking.
"I hear you came down from the bridge backward," Shen told Ji.
Heat climbed Ji's neck, because the whole yard had watched her do it.
They had cheered when the bridge split, expecting a magnificent leap.
Instead she had crawled back on her knees with Luo tied against her shoulders.
"The boards were breaking ahead of me," Ji said.
"I could not leap with Luo on my back."
Shen nodded and swallowed her bun.
"I would like to learn that," she said.
"I have wanted to retreat properly for years," she added.
Two classmates whispered the word crawling, and it reached the back row before Ji's blush did.
The gatekeeper chose that moment to tug the badge from her upper sleeve.
The stitching tore, leaving a flap of indigo and the badge in his hand.
Without that badge she could not enter the provincial festival or any public terrace.
The academy owned the largest terrace and signed every invitation in the valley.
Her name would simply stop appearing on lists, and in a year nobody would ask why.
She could walk out of the valley tonight and never hear about the bridge again.
Shame told her that was the only dignified answer left.
Then Luo shifted her weight off the bad ankle, and the plan fell apart.
Ji could not leave her standing alone in this yard under that word.
Elder Tang Wenrui came out of the inner court in the red robes of a third-ring cultivator.
Three pale gold circles shone at his wrists as he reached toward the gate.
The iron latch bar rose without a finger touching it.
Ji's single ring worked only against things her own hands were holding, and on a good day that meant a cup.
Tang looked at the stool, then at the woman sitting on it.
"You cannot accept students this academy has dismissed," he said.
Shen moved her half bun to the other hand.
"I can accept dismissed students," she said.
"It is the attached ones who cause trouble."
Tang ignored that and looked directly at Ji.
"Your academy sword belongs to this institution," he said.
The academy owned the blade, and Ji's father had paid for the silver hilt with a year of ferry fares.
She would have to write to him that the hilt had stayed behind.
Keeping the sword meant owing the academy a blade on her way out.
Returning it meant the whole yard watching her be finished.
Shen did not reach for Ji's hand, and she did not look away.
Ji unfastened the sword and laid it across the gatekeeper's arms.
A ring flared at her wrist as she let the weight go.
He sat down against the wall with the sword across his lap.
"Then nobody needs to polish the scabbard for me," Ji told Tang.
Luo made a sound that might have been a cough.
Tang's jaw tightened, but he pointed at the stool instead of at Ji.
"That stool belongs to the gatehouse," he said.
Shen stood and tucked it under one arm.
"Then I shall return it tomorrow, in person, at your festival table," she said.
She turned toward the road and winked at Ji, who had not known masters could.
"Your first lesson is how to leave before they find you more work," she said.
Luo limped after them without being asked, and Ji did not answer for her.
Behind them, Tang told the gatekeeper to fetch the festival list and a fresh brush.
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