Chapter 9: The Fifth Day

It came on a Tuesday morning in the fourth month.

Sena woke before her governess and lay still in the early light understanding what her body was telling her. She had been expecting it for weeks — her body had been preparing her with the incremental insistence of something that intended to arrive on its own schedule regardless of anyone’s preferences. She had known it was close. She had not known it would feel like this — not painful, not frightening, simply significant in the way that ordinary mornings are not significant.

She rose. She managed the practical necessities with the composure her governess had spent fourteen years building in her. Then she sat at her writing table and looked at the plum tree through the garden window — fully bloomed in the fourth month warmth — and understood that something in the accounting of her life had irrevocably changed.

Her governess arrived at the usual hour. She took one look at Sena’s face and understood immediately with the perception of a woman who had been waiting for this morning. She said nothing beyond what practical necessity required and then sat with her charge in the particular quiet of women sharing significant information without making more of it than it needed to be.

“I will notify the appropriate household officials.”

“Yes.”

“Lady Choi will need to be informed.”

“Yes.”

Her governess looked at her with the expression she kept for moments that exceeded the ordinary boundaries of their relationship — not sentiment exactly, something more durable. “You are ready for this.”

Sena looked at the plum tree. “I know.”

Lady Choi received the notification before the morning meal.

She read it with the composed attention she applied to all official communications and set it on her desk and permitted herself precisely the time required to feel what she felt about it — which was considerable, and which thirty one years of discipline had earned her the right to feel privately.