Josei

I was pregnant.

But I only wanted the baby, not the baby’s father.

With my belly about to become impossible to hide, I simply blocked him.

The very next day, though, he showed up outside my apartment and stopped me at my door.

When I saw his gaze settle on the swell of my stomach, I played it cool.

“What are you staring at? I just gained weight.”

At that, he looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Don’t worry. I don’t need any child support, and I won’t use this baby as an excuse to bother you. All you need to do is disappear completely-”

Before I could finish, he cut me off. “No.” “I want this child too.”

My husband Chen Jing and I lived in harmony as a married couple, raising a son and a daughter.

Everyone said that for a merchant’s daughter like me to marry Chen Jing was a stroke of divine luck.

I deeply believed that too.

Reborn back to the year I turned sixteen, I held up the embroidered ball, waiting quietly for the new top scholar as he made his triumphant ride through the streets.

But Chen Jing waved the embroidered ball away.

He didn’t even care who the ball hit. It was as if, in this life, whoever I married had nothing to do with him.

I suddenly realized with a start- In this life, Chen Jing wanted a different wife.

Later, the good man I married was the very one he had caused the embroidered ball to strike.

Jiang Yerao is young, beautiful, naïve, and proud. Even though she knows Ruan Pingshan is only willing to give her money and affection, not an official place by his side, she stays with him because she likes him too much. While enjoying the sweetness of being spoiled, she is also stung by the realities of class differences, marriage, and her own self-respect. Little by little, she realizes that being nothing more than a pampered canary can never truly put her at his side.

With the encouragement of her friends and the push of her career, Jiang Yerao goes from relying on Ruan Pingshan to running her own buyer’s boutique. She learns how to judge people’s intentions, protect herself, and rethink both love and independence. Meanwhile, through her transformation, Ruan Pingshan gradually lets go of his fear of marriage and family relationships and begins to face his own feelings. The two of them pull against each other, misunderstand each other, and test each other along the way, until in the end, they choose each other in a more equal and open-hearted way.

Dad didn’t like me. I knew this from a very young age.

Because I wasn’t the boy he wanted.

To have a son, he sent me away, saying, “Sons are the roots, and I don’t lack daughters.”

Never having been loved, I was upset about it for a long time.

But when it came time for him to need support in his old age, he said, “Sons are unreliable; daughters are the most caring.”

“Second Sister, when Dad gets old, it’ll all be up to you!”