Short Story

On my wedding night, Yuan Zhi called me a beautiful idiot and said she had no idea what Yuan Lang saw in me.

Ridiculous.

I was fair-skinned and lovely, clever and quick-witted.

That was jealousy talking!

After a night’s sleep, I was still indignant.

I shook Yuan Lang awake bright and early and whined about what she had said.

Yuan Lang watched me through narrowed eyes for a long while.

“Mm.

You certainly are.”

In the third year of keeping Yu Jingchen mine by force, I went bankrupt.

“Keeping a pet canary and feeding it chicken feed.

Impressive.”

As he sneered at me, a system suddenly appeared in my head.

[That walking jinx of a male lead has some nerve complaining.

He’s the reason your company went under.]

I froze.

The system launched into an angry tirade.

[Haven’t you noticed?

Apart from the hate sex every night, all he makes you feel is miserable.]

[The only good thing about this man is his dick.

Set him loose, and I’ll get you a male lead who actually brings you good fortune.]

While I was still thinking, Yu Jingchen eyed the food I’d brought home with distaste.

“Stick with you and I’ll starve to death.

A couple of leaves for dinner, and you expect me to work all night.”

After a few seconds of silence, I opened the door.

“You can go.”

Yu Jingchen rolled his eyes.

“This again?

Don’t think I don’t know you’ve hidden a tracker on me.

You’ll wait until I get far enough away, then drag me back…”

I reached out and pulled the stud with its blinking red light from his ear.

His mocking smile froze.

My mother was a general.

A powerful prince humiliated her, then spread vicious rumors to avenge his wounded pride.

When my brother sought justice, the prince’s sister accused him of rebellion.

The emperor condemned our entire household, and she was crowned empress.

They thought we were all dead.

They were wrong.

I survived—and entered the palace as the emperor’s favorite Go player.

Now I would become his favorite consort, and make every move count.

My elder sister was said to be a bodhisattva reborn.

Her kindness cost me my dowry, my home, and finally my life.

When a magpie chose two brides for the crown prince, she became his virtuous wife, and I became the concubine who would bear children for her and do her dirty work.

Even my own son wished she had given birth to him.

I ended that life with a plate of poisoned pastries.

Now I have opened my eyes on the day of the consort selection again.

This time, I will not be her stepping-stone.

Years ago, I saved the crown prince from a falling beam.

It broke my leg, and I became the capital’s notorious young lady with a limp.

Later, when he ascended the throne, he sat high in the imperial hall and asked what reward I desired.

Everyone thought I loved him deeply and would surely ask to enter his palace as a consort and remain at his side.

After all, no official family in the capital would take a woman with a limp as its mistress.

What they did not expect was that I would ask for a title of my own and the revenues of a thousand households.

As they whispered among themselves, no one noticed the faint tension in his brow vanish.

“Then let it be as you wish.”

I was the late emperor’s younger sister, the reigning emperor’s own aunt, and the only Grand Princess of Great Jin.

On my sixtieth birthday, my husband’s supposedly dead first wife appeared at my door with the daughter she had borne late in life.

“The first wife is the lawful wife; her successor must take a concubine’s place.

But Your Highness is far too exalted for me to ask that of you.

I am willing to become a concubine myself.

I ask only that you show mercy and allow Mian to be entered in her father’s clan register, so that father and daughter may be reunited.”

Only then did I learn that the husband who had shown me such love and devotion had been keeping her in another household for forty years.

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.

Only on my wedding night did I discover that I had not married the second son of the marquis’s residence—the man I had been introduced to before the match.

I had married the sickly eldest son, who had spent most of his life confined to bed.

The idea had come from Miss Liu, who entered the household on the same day as I did and was now the Second Young Madam.

Smiling sweetly, she asked, “I heard you and Eldest Brother fell in love at first sight, Sister-in-law. Are you happy now that you are married?”

Everyone expected me to cry, make a scene, and expose how the grooms had been switched.

Instead, I lowered my eyes and calmly served tea to my new parents-in-law before I spoke.

“A maiden treasures her reputation above all else. I did not dare look closely at my future husband that day. Only today have I learned what a true gentleman looks like.”

My parents-in-law’s worry turned to delight, and they praised me as virtuous and noble—the finest of wives.

What none of them knew was that I came from a merchant family.

I believed in fair trades, and I never forgot a debt.

For the little matter of deceiving me, I judged that a few lives would be payment enough.

I was the heroine of an erotic novel, until the system dumped me into a chaste romance to reform me.

Please.

I went straight up to the male lead and said, “Hey.

Want to kiss?”

He had me thrown in jail for molesting him.

Later, he turned out to be even more outrageous than the men in erotic fiction.

I am a sickly, frail, spoiled drama queen.

One night, as I was once again willfully demanding my Butler come and coax me to sleep, a stream of Bullet Comments suddenly appeared before my eyes: “The horror boss is outside hunting Players and having the time of his life. He doesn’t have time to tuck you in and coax you to sleep.”

“She’s just a human being kept as a pet in a castle by a horror boss. She actually thinks she’s some kind of Young Lady.”

“Once the big boss meets the clever and witty Female Lead, he’ll grow disgusted with this delicate, spoiled drama queen. He’ll use all sorts of perverted methods to torture her before eating her piece by piece.”

Terrified, I hid under my covers, trembling uncontrollably.

The next second, a cool hand gently pulled back the duvet. A voice, gentle yet tinged with a faint, chilling coldness, drifted down from above me: “Master, what’s wrong?”