Comedy

Yang Bufan never took anything seriously.

Not even marrying me.

An auspicious date for the betrothal?

Too much trouble to choose.

How much to offer in betrothal gifts?

Too much trouble to think about.

He left every last detail to his cousin.

He would sooner spend an entire afternoon beneath the flowering trees, stringing jasmine for our dear Miss Meng, than spare a second glance at the marriage contract I had sent him.

He was getting annoyed.

“She’s changed it twice already.

Last time, I left two strokes out of her name.

What is it now?

Did I leave something out of mine too?”

The servant who had brought it faltered.

“The names have been corrected, sir.

It’s just that Miss Lu would still like to know what you think…”

Yang Bufan propped his chin on his hand, already losing interest.

“As long as it’s fixed.

Tell her to stop hurrying me.”

“The sixth day of the sixth month, isn’t it?

I’ll be back.”

In my senior year of high school, my parents cut off every cent of my living expenses and tried to force me to drop out.

With nowhere else to turn, I enrolled at an elite school packed with rich heirs.

My grades were good enough to earn a full tuition waiver, but tuition was not going to keep me fed.

After going hungry for half a month, I finally worked up the courage to face the classmates who never studied and ask, “Does anyone need their homework done? It’s only five yuan per assignment.”

The young masters and heiresses, who had been busy showing off their wealth, fell silent and stared at me in shock.

Then the room erupted.

“Five yuan? Who do you think you’re insulting? Five hundred—I’m first!”

“Five thousand! Put me at the front!”

“Fifty thousand—and I mean dollars!”

“I’ll top every bid! Let’s see who dares fight me for first place today!”

After landing in a world of beastfolk, I felt an itch and gave it a scratch.

And then—!

I froze, looked down, and lifted my shirt in disbelief.

A second later, I let out a shriek and practically crawled to the hospital.

“Doctor, help!

Something weird is growing on me!”

The doctor booked me in to have it removed.

But that night, I dreamed of a little octopus with tears streaming down its face.

It held up a tentacle with a piece missing and wailed, “That’s my arm!

It ran off to cuddle you.

It doesn’t want me anymore!”

Hang on.

Who taught it to cuddle like that?

The real princess consort was back.

It was time for me, the impostor, to go home and farm.

Before leaving, I gave everyone careful instructions.

When the vegetables in the back garden sprouted, they were to whittle stakes and put up supports for the vines.

When the fruit in the grove ripened, they mustn’t pick it all.

Leave some on the branches for the birds to get through winter.

Leave the swallows’ nest over the residence gates alone, too.

They would be back next year.

I said a great deal.

Everyone stood with their heads bowed, and no one answered.

Then I understood.

Ah.

Of course.

The princess consort came from a rich family.

Surely the money she had brought back would feed the entire household.

I no longer had to worry about keeping a dozen-odd people alive.

The steward asked, his voice thick, “Won’t you leave a word for His Highness?”

I thought about it.

“Well… tell him I hope he eats a couple more bowls of rice.”

The world is one giant slapdash production, and I somehow drift through it anyway.

My father is a financial tycoon, but I can barely handle addition and subtraction under ten. My mother is a gorgeous award-winning actress, while I look perfectly ordinary. My brother held his first solo art exhibition at four, while at five I was still toddling after him babbling nonsense.

Even our maid, Wang Ma, and our butler, Uncle Chen, turned out to be retired legends hiding in plain sight.

Thankfully, all of them adored me. I slowly made peace with being ordinary.

Then one day, a genius girl who had gone viral online showed up at our door and demanded that I give her back her place as the real daughter of the Su family.

Wonderful. The worry that had been hanging over me for years finally dropped dead.

I was fighting someone in the street when Young Madam took a liking to me on the spot.

She gave me fifty taels of silver and asked if I was willing to become her husband’s concubine.

They say a debt of recognition should be repaid with one’s body. Fair enough.

But was this really the way to repay it?

Still, I was desperately short on silver, so I gritted my teeth and agreed.

Only after entering the manor did I learn that my husband was introverted, my mother-in-law was tyrannical, and my sister-in-law was insufferably arrogant.

Young Madam hadn’t bought me back to serve anyone at all.

She had brought me into this family to be King Yan.

To break his betrothal to my elder sister and marry me, Lu Jin agreed to three conditions.

First, on her birthday every year, he must personally bring a bouquet of pomegranate blossoms to her residence.

Second, if we ever had a daughter, the child must bear her name.

He agreed to both.

As for the third, my sister said she would name it another day.

After we married, it did bother me that he went to her with flowers year after year.

But he was gentle with me, and we were so deeply in love that I could hardly bring myself to complain.

Besides, whenever I showed the least displeasure, he would say, “Once a promise is given, not ten thousand mountains can stand in its way,” and tell me not to ask again.

What truly stuck in my throat was the way he mentioned my sister every time he called our daughter’s name.

She did not live in our house, yet she was everywhere in it.

At last I could bear no more.

I wept and insisted on changing the child’s name.

Lu Jin merely watched me coldly.

“Have you finished making a scene in front of the child?”

He resented my suspicions and grew steadily more distant.

Then my sister sent word of her third condition: he was to help her divorce her husband and bring her home.

I promptly wrote a divorce agreement of my own.

Lu Jin took it with a weary sigh.

“She’s already given up so much.

What more do you want?”

“If she hadn’t stepped aside, I would never have married you.

Had I known it would come to this, she might as well have refused.”

I was reborn on the day Lu Jin came to ask for my hand.

He handed the betrothal token straight to my sister.

“The eldest Miss Xie alone holds my heart.

I wish to take her as my wife and remain true to her all my life.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Born with a violent nature and abandoned by her family, Xu Qingqing agrees to marry an abusive scholar for her beloved elder sister’s sake-only to beat her new household into peace, turn an enemy into a husband, and storm a marquis’s estate when her sister’s life is threatened.

I have never been able to stand idle people.

The moment I married into the Li family, I found my new husband surrounded by a flock of talented beauties—and not a single one of them doing a day’s work.

So I lined everyone up and put them all to work: the pipa player to the music house, the dancer to the embroidery shop, and my useless heir of a husband off to perform for Prince Qi.

What started as a scheme to pay off the manor’s debts snowballed into a commercial empire—until the court, the temples, and a rebellion turned my money-making machine into something far more dangerous.

Ever since I was little, I had been a little slower than everyone else to speak and act.

People had always laughed at me for it when I was a child.

Gradually, I stopped wanting to speak.

Until the emperor asked me, in front of everyone, whom I wanted to marry.

When he named the gracious Prince Rui, my eyes lit up.

But by the time I nodded, the emperor had already asked, “Surely you don’t mean Prince Yan?”

Across the hall, the prince everyone called cruel and ruthless lurched in his seat and dropped his wine cup.