Short Story

My sister was beautiful and brilliant, always effortlessly winning people over.

Compared to her, my plain self was like a timid little mouse.

My parents used to say, “How can you even compare yourself to your sister?”

My childhood friend said, “Jiajia and you don’t look like sisters.”

I asked him, “Then what do we look like instead?”

Sniffling, he replied:

“Like a princess and her maid.”

That was until I met Cen Yi.

My parents were clinging to my sister, introducing her to his family and boasting about how exceptional their daughter was.

I stood off to the side, stealing glances at the cookies on the table.

But he bypassed everyone else and pulled me into a tight embrace.

“Mine,”

he said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but this card has insufficient funds.”

I froze for a heartbeat before quickly handing over another one.

The red light flashed again.

“I’m sorry, this card is also declined.”

“…What?”

I steadied my breathing and dialed my husband’s number.

“Honey, haven’t you been paid yet? The baby is out of formula.”

His voice through the receiver was devoid of warmth.

“A household isn’t supported by one person alone. I expect you to learn how to be independent instead of living like some pathetic parasite.”

With those words, he declared war.

Fine.

Then let the hunt begin.

Pei Ling’an said he wanted to break off our engagement again.

This time, it was because I refused to give the golden hairpin I had won for my poetry to my younger cousin.

“The Shen Family has fallen. No matter which daughter I choose to marry, Shen Tongzhi wouldn’t dare say a single word against it.”

He rested his chin on his hand, looking at me with a faint, mocking smile. “Break the engagement, or give the hairpin to Yuchi. Shen Yusu, the choice is yours.”

Everyone was waiting for me to bow my head.

Just as I had done countless times before.

But this time, I only tightened my grip on the golden hairpin and said softly,

“Then let’s break the engagement.”

On the day the divorce was finalized, I booked a high-speed rail ticket back to my hometown. A phone, an ID card, and a bank card with a meager balance were all I had left.

When the butler called to say the young master was crying for his mother, I finally understood that the son I had borne and his father loved the same woman.

Before the train left, I made one last promise: I would never disturb him again.

My Miss is a traditional lady of the old school; the rules are etched into her very bones.

On their wedding night, the Chen Family Young Master, disdainful that she wasn’t a “modern woman,” didn’t even lift her bridal veil before climbing over the wall and running away.

Her parents-in-law, fearing she might do something drastic, sent people to stand guard outside her door all night.

But the next morning…

Miss appeared properly dressed and groomed, kneeling respectfully to serve tea to her parents-in-law. “Since I have entered the gates of the Chen Family, it is only right that I serve my elders.”

Three years later.

The Chen Family Young Master returned, bringing with him a woman dressed in a Western-style skirt and high heels.

Standing side-by-side in the center of the main hall, they declared that arranged marriages were a relic of the old feudal system and demanded a divorce from Miss.

In the silence that filled the hall, no one could bear to look at Miss’s face.

Only I saw-

As Miss lowered her gaze…

Very slowly, ever so slowly…

The corners of her lips curled into a faint smile.

I spent eighteen years in a Buddhist temple.

Eighteen years later, I returned as Princess Chang’an. To compensate me for those lost years, the Empress Mother made a public promise: she would grant me any one thing I desired.

I looked around the room, my gaze landing on Wei Zhao, who shone brilliantly amidst the unremarkable crowd. Pointing at him, I declared, “I want him to be my Imperial Son-in-Law.”

Only later did I discover that Wei Zhao and my younger sister, Princess Kangle, were childhood sweethearts. They were a mere imperial decree away from being wed.

But what of it?

Even if I had known from the start, I still would have claimed Wei Zhao as mine!

Chapter 0

My Empress Mother was a transmigrator. Before she returned to her original world, she told me:

I am the vicious villainess in a side story. I would supposedly be consumed by hatred born of love, commit all sorts of evil, and ultimately bring about my own destruction, my corpse abandoned in the wilderness.

“Until you have the power to protect yourself, remember: you must stay far away from Gu Qinglan.”

At first, I truly intended to stay away from Gu Qinglan.

But the plot still forced us to cross paths in the capital.

Left with no choice, I took on the role of the villain and began actively sabotaging him.

Yet, Gu Qinglan looked at me in confusion and said:

“Why is it that even though you’re so wicked, I still find myself falling for you?”

Tsk, tsk. Honestly? I have no words!

During the poorest year of my life, I sold myself to Zhou Jinyan for three hundred thousand yuan to serve as a substitute for his White Moonlight.

His friends once egged me on to drink until I suffered a gastric hemorrhage.

They asked him, “Don’t you feel bad for her?”

He looked down, his tone indifferent. “She’s just a substitute.”

Later, to save his White Moonlight, Zhou Jinyan stood by and watched as I fell from a cliff into the sea.

The search and rescue team never found my body.

He suddenly went mad, searching the entire world for me.

Five years later, I was invited back to the country and ran into him at an event.

He stared at me intently, his eyes rimmed with red. “I knew you weren’t dead. I’ve been looking for you-”

I took a step back, offering a polite yet distant smile. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

In the year I was desperately poor, I deliberately fed two of my fingers into the factory machinery and had them crushed, all for the thirty thousand yuan my grandmother needed for surgery.

The factory manager frowned with such pain that he wanted to compensate me eighty thousand yuan. I was too guilty to take it, so I only asked for thirty thousand.

Years passed. My grandmother had been gone for many years.

Then I saw a trending news report: the factory from back then had been swallowed by a fire.

The factory manager had died of a heart attack. His wife had vanished.

Their twelve-year-old son had been sent to an orphanage.

Looking at those helpless, terrified eyes on the screen, I poured the medicine I had been about to swallow down the drain.

Then… let me live once more.

For that thirty thousand yuan from back then.

I was born a beggar.

Maybe some wealthy young lady had made a mistake, or maybe some brothel woman had simply had rotten luck.

Either way, I came into this world. I grew up begging for bowls of slop.

At my most wretched, I even fought mangy dogs for food.

Later, to stay alive, I sweet-talked a human trafficker into selling me into the palace.

On the day I entered the palace, I saw the red sun rising at the edge of the sky.

It looked just like the duck egg yolk that had once gone rolling and wobbling to my feet in the Drunken Fragrance Pavilion.

I smacked my lips and savored the memory for a moment, then turned and stepped onto that long, long palace road.

From a beggar hated by all, I became a palace maid within the towering imperial palace.

That year, I was nine.