At last, the eunuch had been allowed to retire and return home. Before leaving, he made one final stop: he wanted to redeem his own “treasure.”
The place was still busy. New castrates-to-be were lined up, waiting their turn to enter palace service. As they watched, the old master climbed the stairs, reached up to a beam, and took down the preserved token that symbolized promotion and a completed career. When he handed it back to the retiring eunuch, the men waiting below looked on with unmistakable envy.
“Sir, once you’re home enjoying retirement, don’t forget the rest of us,” the old cutter said with a grin.
The eunuch accepted the item, narrowed his eyes, smacked his lips, and gave the faintest nod. It was the sort of haughty, superior gesture he would never have dared make inside the imperial palace.
Then his expression changed.
“No, this isn’t right. This is not mine. Mine had a mole on it—I remember that clearly.”
“Sir, you must be joking,” the master replied at once. “How would I dare give you the wrong one?”
“I said it’s wrong, so it’s wrong. This is not my treasure. I know exactly what mine looked like.”
Another retired eunuch, who had just received his own keepsake and was also preparing to leave, stepped in to calm things down.
“Peace, peace, sir. It’s only a token, after all. Whether it’s truly yours or not, it’s just symbolic. Haven’t you already risen high enough to retire with honor?”
“I want mine!” the eunuch roared.
The shout was so sharp that even one of the men in the middle of performing a castration froze with his hands suspended.
From somewhere in the crowd came a muttered line, barely above a whisper: “As if he could put it back on anyway...”
“Who said that? Who said it?”
The old eunuch was shaking with rage. In a fit, he flung down the “treasure” he had been holding—the one that wasn’t his. The outburst startled everyone around him. The master who had just paused in his work jerked his hand, the blade flashed, and down it went.
Another man had just lost his own “treasure.”