Romance

On my wedding day, a certain "ex-boyfriend" sent me a message.

"Do you know what you did wrong?

"If you do, we can get back together."

I stared blankly at my phone, then at the contact name on the chat: "8/12-Six-Pack, Great Dresser, Terrible Drinker."

I sank into thought.

"?"

When I did not reply for a long time, he sent another question mark.

"I'm getting married today."

After some thought, I decided it was best to be direct.

"How far along are you?" he replied at once.

"I've already changed into my reception dress," I answered honestly.

"It's time to go make the rounds and toast the guests."

A deep, mellow male voice sounded beside my ear.

With it came his scent-a cool, distant trace of bamboo mingled with the sea.

It was Lu Yuzhi, the man I had married.

"Okay."

I gave him a stiff smile and locked my phone the instant I heard his voice.

What I did not know was when he had come up behind me-or how much he had seen.

Lu Yuzhi and I were joined by a business marriage, not love.

Even so, no one would be happy to see their new spouse talking to someone of the opposite sex saved as "8/12-Six-Pack, Great Dresser, Terrible Drinker" on their wedding day.

I was just about to tell my beastman husband that my sight had returned when I overheard his younger brother trying to persuade him.

“Shi Zhou, you may have lost your memory, but Yue Wei was your fiancée.”

“She’s badly injured now, and only your S-rank healing power can save her.”

“Are you really going to stand by and let her die?”

“If you can’t bear to leave that little blind girl of yours alone, I’ll take your place for a while.”

“She can’t see anyway.”

In the end, Shi Zhou gave in.

“All right.”

The live comments erupted with excitement.

[The strictest dad in the entire shipping fandom has arrived. Who else understands the noble sacrifice of a tsundere little brother offering himself up to the cannon fodder for the sake of his brother and sister-in-law’s true love?]

[Little brother: This family would fall apart without me.]

I raised my head and looked over, my heart skipping a beat.

Before me stood an upgraded version of Shi Ye-taller, broader, younger-looking, devastatingly handsome, and with an even straighter nose.

After Shi Zhou left, I felt my way over and wrapped my arms around Shi Ye’s waist from behind.

“Honey, you feel so different today.”

“Why are you suddenly hanging to the left?”

“Is something bothering you?”

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.”

I found an unconscious noblewoman by the river.

One bowl of lard rice a day, and she slowly nursed back to health.

Then one day, a great contingent of Tiger Guards came sweeping in full force to my butcher shop and knelt before the noblewoman: "We humbly request that our mistress return to the marquis's residence!"

The man leading them noticed me standing off to the side, trembling: "And who are you?"

I blurted out in a panic: "This commoner is the third butcher shop south of the city, pig slaugh-"

Before I could finish, the noblewoman clapped her hand over my mouth.

"This is my only daughter, the one I had fostered with my maiden family."

Before I married into the Eastern Palace, I secretly kept a man in Jiangnan behind the Crown Prince’s back.

He had broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and worked hard in bed.

His only flaw was that he bragged far too much.

He was plainly a rough country man, yet he spoke of imperial treasures with utter disdain.

He claimed the Cloud-Mist tea reserved for the imperial family tasted like swill and that he used it to feed his cattle.

Rubies worth a fortune, he said, had been nothing but marbles to him as a child.

Even when I decided to leave him, he kept boasting.

Kneeling at my feet with both arms wrapped around my legs, he begged, “Weiwei, don’t go. I’ll make you Crown Princess!”

I rolled my eyes at him. “I have no interest in being Crown Princess.”

He stared at me in shock and muttered, “Weiwei, how are you even better at bragging than I am?”

Later, I married into the Eastern Palace. I heard the Crown Prince had long cherished another woman in his heart.

Though he had lost his memory, he had remained chaste for her.

He told me coldly, “I do not love you. Expect nothing from me.”

I blinked at that familiar face. Even after he crouched down to wash my feet, he still could not make sense of it.

With an adorably baffled look, he asked, “What’s going on? How come I’m so good at taking care of you?”

Le Yao wakes inside an ancient romance as the personal maid of Prince Li, a brilliant war hero whose violent obsession with Wei Qingzhi turns every workday into a fight for survival.

As she becomes the unwilling go-between in their toxic courtship, Le Yao schemes to buy freedom with fellow maid Qingping-until the story’s ordained romance demands a price she refuses to accept.

My mother waited for my father her entire life.

Even when illness confined her to her deathbed, she never got the snowy stroll among plum blossoms he had promised her.

So when Second Young Master Cui and I took a liking to each other, I told him I would wait for him only three times.

The first would honor the joy of our meeting.

The second would honor the bond of truly knowing one another.

The third would honor the love we had shared.

After the third, our ties would be severed, and we would have nothing more to do with each other for the rest of our lives.

Second Young Master Cui agreed with a smile, saying that such a fine match was a blessing from Heaven and that he would never dare cast good fortune away.

Later, he rescued a young woman.

For her sake, he made me wait again and again.

The final time, he sent word that our wedding would be postponed and that we could discuss it again after he had safely brought the young woman back.

I gave a cold laugh and asked, “Whether I marry, and whom I marry, is no concern of yours, Young Master Cui.”

The wedding went ahead as planned after that.

Only the groom had changed.

Anyone who tried to steal my betrothed was certainly detestable.

But anyone who tried to steal Cui Zhaoyu’s bride was, in my eyes, utterly adorable.

In a secret chamber beneath my imperial father’s former residence, I found a breathtaking woman who claimed to be my birth mother.

She told me my true father was the deposed crown prince who had died long ago in the old capital.

The realm, she said, should have been mine.

But when I finally took the throne, she went mad.

The man I secretly loved was the legitimate princess’s fiancé.

I was the unfavored Seventh Princess, and the fiancé bestowed upon me was a drunken libertine who gambled, kept concubines, and maintained a mistress outside his estate.

But that was all right.

My best friend had the ultimate cheat code.

When I was fifteen, my royal father chose me from among his many daughters.

I was Xizhou’s brightest pearl, yet he sent me by carriage across the Gobi, the desert, and the grasslands.

I was to travel to the distant Central Plains and marry their Crown Prince.

The Crown Prince had his moonlight and his childhood sweetheart.

But the bright moon must sink, and green plums must ripen.

In the end, only the pearl’s light endures.