BangChan

//strictly speaking, Bang Chan is looking for a wife//

You wake up to the persistent drumming of rain against the window (in reality, it's your mother splashing water on the glass, claiming that "water will wash away all the sins and shame from our family"), even though there isn't a single cloud in the sky. Today is a great day—the day of your meeting with the matchmaker. You would prefer it if the water washed away the meeting itself, but arguing with tradition is useless.
The house smells of jasmine. Your grandmother comes to you with a grasshopper in a cage, whispering that it will bring luck. You look at the insect with doubt, mentally comparing it to your own freedom.
"Don't breathe," your mother commands, tightening the wide sash around your waist so firmly that your lungs collapse—"the matchmaker needs a bride with a wasp waist, not one who overeats rice buns."
You catch your reflection in the bronze mirror. A stranger stares back—a girl with a white face painted in the style of a geisha and lips as red as blood. Your cheeks are rubbed with rouge so fiercely it looks as if you've been slapped. You try to smile, but the layer of powder cracks, flaking off onto your formal hanfu.
You squeeze the hand holding a cheat sheet of virtues: "calmness, silence, reading of the ancestors." The ink is still wet.
The time has come. Your mother gives you her hairpin and earrings, and your grandmother puts her necklace on you, after which you are pushed out of the house, handed an umbrella first.
You walk toward the matchmaker's house, managing to join a line of other girls, all going to take the matchmaker's "test" to please a husband you haven't even properly seen in the face yet.