I have often wondered when the will to survive first took root inside me.
It was not born from comfort. It did not come from hope. Nothing in my life had ever suggested that survival would lead to gentleness. And yet, even in moments when living felt like a prolonged punishment, something inside me refused to loosen its grip.
I did not know why.
Life was not kind. It had never been bearable in the way people spoke of bearable things. Hunger had hollowed me. Cold had stiffened my bones. Fear had learned my name before anyone else did. And still—still—there was this unyielding insistence buried deep in my chest, an urge that whispered endure even when no reward was promised.
I did not survive because I believed in happiness.
I survived because something in me would not allow me to stop.
By the time I was fifteen, I had spent two full years inside the palace walls. Two years of labor that did not soften with repetition. Two years of waking before dawn and sleeping long after exhaustion had already claimed me. Two years of learning that suffering could be systematized, regulated, and administered with frightening efficiency.
The palace did not rage. It did not need to. It simply continued.
Children arrived. Children vanished.
Some faded slowly—eaten away by hunger that was never quite starvation but never relief either. Others were taken swiftly. A misstep. A slow hand. A look held too long. The reasons changed. The outcome did not.
I watched girls my age collapse during work and not rise again. I watched boys dragged away after failing tasks their bodies were never meant to endure. Later, whispers followed—about what was done to some of them, about how their futures were cut apart so they could serve closer to power without ever touching it.
No one cried out loud for long. Grief, like everything else here, learned to be quiet.
There were nights when I lay awake, staring into darkness thick with breath and bodies, and asked myself the same question again and again:
Why am I still trying?
I had no answer that sounded noble. No grand dream shaped my endurance. I did not imagine silk or jewels or power. All I knew was this: I wanted more than this existence that ground children into dust and called it order.
I wanted a life where survival did not consume every thought.
That want alone felt dangerous.
The rumors began in the third month of that year.
They traveled the way all important truths did in the palace—not openly, but carried in pauses, exchanged in half-sentences while folding linens or scrubbing basins. Attendants spoke when they thought we could not hear. Maids whispered when their backs were turned.
A selection was coming.
Not immediately. Not yet. But soon enough that preparation had already begun.
Those deemed suitable—girls and boys both—would be chosen for reassignment to the inner court. Closer work. More demanding work. But also cleaner quarters. Warmer bedding. Food that came regularly, even if still sparingly.
Once or twice a day.
The number felt like abundance.
To be chosen, they said, one would need to please the Head of Selection. Not beauty alone. Not obedience alone. But something less tangible—composure, awareness, the ability to exist without disruption.
Those who failed would remain where they were.
Or worse.
I listened. I remembered. I adjusted.
For many, the gossip sparked nervous excitement or quiet dread. Some whispered prayers. Others laughed bitterly, convinced the palace would never favor them. A few grew reckless, as if deciding it was better to burn brightly once than dim slowly forever.
I did none of those things.
I became deliberate.
Every movement began to carry intention. I finished tasks neither first nor last. I spoke only when addressed. I learned which attendants valued speed and which valued silence. I learned when to lower my eyes and when to let them rest calmly ahead.
Not empty. Never empty.
I had seen what emptiness did here. It swallowed people whole.
The deaths continued as they always had, but now each one felt sharper, closer. A girl who used to sleep beside me stopped breathing one night and was gone by morning. A boy who shared my water duty collapsed under the sun and was dragged away without ceremony.
No rites. No names spoken.
I told myself not to look away.
If I survived, it would not be by pretending ignorance. I needed to understand the cost of staying alive here.
By the time the attendants began moving differently—speaking less, watching more—I knew the rumors had ripened into truth.
We were ordered to wash more thoroughly than usual. Hair combed until it shone dully. Robes exchanged for newer ones, still plain but less frayed. We were inspected without explanation.
Fear moved through us like a held breath.
The palace was preparing to look closely.
When we were led toward the western corridor—the one we had been forbidden to enter before—I felt the weight of those two years settle fully into my bones. Every bruise, every night of hunger, every silent disappearance pressed into this moment.
This was not ambition.
This was survival choosing a direction.
Inside the chamber, the women waiting were not attendants. Authority rested on them like a second skin. They looked at us not as children but as potential placements, futures to be arranged or discarded.
"You have endured," one of them said. "Now you will be observed."
Observed. The word was almost gentle.
The tasks that followed were subtle cruelties. Instructions layered atop one another. Silence stretched deliberately too long. Reactions measured more than results.
I understood the test immediately.
The palace did not want desperation.
It wanted control.
When I was told to pour tea, I felt the room narrow to that single act. The porcelain was thin, fragile. Steam curled upward like breath leaving a body.
I poured slowly.
Not because I was calm, but because I knew panic would show itself in haste.
When I set the cup down, I did not look for approval. I waited.
The woman's gaze lingered. "You've done this before?"
"No."
"But you watched."
"Yes."
That was all. But it was enough.
Afterward, nothing was explained. We were returned to our quarters to wait, the waiting heavier now because it carried possibility.
The next day, assignments shifted.
Some were sent back to the outer halls. Others—myself included—were drawn inward, closer to the inner quarters. The work was quieter, cleaner, more closely monitored. Mistakes were noted, not punished immediately.
I understood then: the palace was narrowing its gaze.
That afternoon, I saw what happened to someone who forgot caution.
A girl complained—not loudly, not rebelliously. Just a single remark about hunger. It did not reach the officials. It did not need to.
She was taken aside.
When she returned, she moved as though part of her had been left behind. By evening, she was gone entirely.
Silence tightened around us.
Later, carrying folded linens, I glimpsed movement behind a screen—silk, laughter restrained to a controlled murmur. A concubine, perhaps more than one. I did not look directly.
Power lived there, behind screens and walls.
And I understood something then, with a clarity that settled rather than shocked:
The inner court was not freedom.
But it was distance—from the edge of disappearance.
That was enough.
When an attendant dropped a scroll near the doorway, time slowed. Picking it up without permission was dangerous. Leaving it was negligence.
I chose neither impulse nor fear.
I knelt, lifted it carefully with both hands, and offered it back with my head bowed.
"I didn't want it damaged," I said quietly.
The attendant studied me. "Your name?"
"Yin Yue."
It felt like reclaiming something I had almost forgotten.
She took the scroll. Said nothing more.
But something had shifted.
That night, lying on my mat, exhaustion pulling at me from every direction, I finally understood the shape of the will that had carried me this far.
It was not hope.
It was refusal.
Refusal to die quietly.
Refusal to be erased.
Refusal to believe that suffering was the only story I would ever inhabit.
Tomorrow, I would continue carefully.
But tonight, I allowed myself one truth:
I wanted more.
And for the first time since the streets, wanting felt possible.