Josei

When I was thirteen, in order to serve the distinguished guest who had come from afar, I smeared lard on the soles of the lead dancer’s shoes, making her slip and embarrass herself on the spot.

After that, the beauty sent to his room became me, just as I had wished.

Yet that impossibly refined nobleman merely looked me over twice, then said a single sentence that left me chilled from head to toe, as if a basin of ice water had been poured over me.

“I saw everything just now.”

Ever since I was little, I had been slow and lacking in wit, while Elder Sister was extraordinarily gifted.

At a poetry gathering held at Marquis Manor, she was afraid I would embarrass myself, so in private, she composed a poem for me.

None of us expected that the true purpose of the gathering was to choose a wife for the Second Young Master of Marquis Manor. And the poem she wrote for me was the very one that caught the Second Young Master’s eye.

Later, I married into Marquis Manor.

After the wedding, Pei You discovered just how dull and ignorant I truly was.

Only then did he realize I was not the person who had written that poem that day.

Pei You resented me, blamed me, despised me.

He said his wife should not be someone like me, a woman with nothing but a pretty face and not a drop of learning inside her.

Whenever we were intimate, he would lean close to my ear and mock me, saying I had none of the dignified bearing of a proper main wife, only a body full of vixenish allure that was of some small use in bed.

I was terrified.

So when I returned to the day of that poetry gathering, I stopped Elder Sister before she could write a poem for me. My voice trembled as I said,

“Thank you, Elder Sister, but there is no need.”

Fu Shiyu, the crown prince of Beijing’s elite circles, was famously untouchable.

I worked as his chief interpreter for three years.

He still never managed to remember my full name.

Until the day I “ran into” him at the gallery he often visited, my fingertip brushing over his Adam’s apple.

“CEO Fu, your tie is crooked.”

He pinned me against the floor-to-ceiling window and bit my earlobe.

“Who are you calling CEO Fu?

“Say that again. I dare you.”

In my fifth year by the side of that charming, reckless young playboy, someone snapped a photo of me that made it look like I was pregnant.

For a while, rumors flew through our circle. Everyone thought I was going to use the baby to force my way up and marry into a wealthy family.

When his long-estranged first love heard the news, she came charging back from overseas.

I thought a bloody storm was about to break loose.

But by the time Lu Heran returned from his business trip, all he heard was that I had gotten rid of the baby and slipped back to my hometown.

Sigh. Good girls like us can fool around all we want on ordinary days.

But if we really got pregnant with a child and no proper status, our parents would beat us to death.

The day my childhood sweetheart and I had our worst fight,

he slapped me for the sake of the young woman he loved.

And I, in a fit of rage, broke three of his ribs.

He screamed that he wanted a divorce, but I refused.

I thought we would keep dragging each other down like this until the day we died.

But reality proved me wrong far too quickly.

Three months later, I fell head over heels for a sweet, innocent younger guy.

He kept chasing me for an official title.

So I had no choice but to pull that familiar number out of my blacklist.

When the call connected, the young woman’s playful voice came from the other end.

“Su Yi, you’re too late. Even if you crawl over like a dog and beg for forgiveness now, Ah Xu won’t spare you a second glance.”

Faced with her provocation, I only said calmly, “Tell Zhou Xu I want a divorce.”

The next second, the phone on the other end seemed to be snatched away. A burst of rustling static followed before Zhou Xu’s voice finally came through, trembling despite his best efforts to restrain it.

He said, “Su Yi, don’t you dare.”

I was the CEO’s white moonlight, but I had gone dark.

“So you can fly overseas for business, but you can’t come overseas to see me? Is it that you can’t afford a ticket, or that you can’t make the time?”

“You keep saying I’m your white moonlight, then turn around and find a substitute. If your feelings are that cheap, don’t ever tell anyone you liked me.”

“I don’t want a man who’s been tainted. Don’t come looking for me again.”

When I walked in, the young nanny was debating the literary achievements of the Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song with my fiancé.

She got so worked up that she raised her hand and thumped him on the chest.

“You’re the one who’s wrong!”

The man was silent for two seconds before a low laugh slipped out.

“Mm. I’m wrong. You’re right.”

I stood behind them, looking down at the custom wedding invitation in my hand, suddenly at a loss. Because honestly…

I really did like this design.

I divorced my ex-husband because he never knew when to stop talking.

Afterward, I decided to date a mute.

My sweet young boyfriend was obedient, attentive, and exactly my type.

One day, I went to pick him up from his university.

Outside his dorm room, however, I heard him talking to his roommate.

“Yu, how long are you planning to keep pretending?”

“Until I get bored.”

Mother always said that if a woman wanted to stay radiant, she had to know how to nourish herself.

Ginseng and deer antler were useless.

What truly nourished a woman was a young, vigorous man.

Following that regimen, she still looked sixteen well into her forties.

Having grown up under her influence, I understood the secret by the time I turned eighteen.

Scholars were lean, generals solid, actors charming.

I had sampled them all.

The one I found most intoxicating was Shen Zhaoye.

I lavished mountains of gold and silver on him, yet never so much as put an arm around his waist.

Then he came to take his leave, claiming he had found a more powerful patron.

Furious, I followed him by lantern light into Springwater Lane.

When I kicked open the door, he was kneeling beside a couch, offering tea to someone.

The beauty reclining there lifted her eyes lazily.

My lantern went out, and my soul nearly fled with the flame.

“Mother?! You’re sleeping with my man?”

When we loved each other most, Jiang Shen and I promised ourselves three lifetimes together.

Perhaps our hearts were too sincere in that moment, for Heaven actually granted our wish.

In our first life, he and I walked hand in hand through the innocence of youth, stopping only one step short of marriage.

In our second, he was reborn as the Crown Prince, second only to the emperor and above all others, while I became the daughter of an impoverished family. I was imprisoned deep within the palace; he galloped across the battlefield.

In our third, the wheel of fortune turned, and it was I who became the sovereign.

Three lives, three lifetimes. How romantic—and how terribly long.

Long enough for me to become meat beneath another’s knife. Long enough for me to become the butcher.

And long enough for me to be born anew.