Short Story

Jiang Yu broke up with me again.

This time, I planned to do what I did when he first dumped me at eighteen-go clear my head by the river.

But the wind off the water was freezing, so I decided to just head back. On the way home, I passed a barbecue stall. I thought I’d be like my twenty-year-old self, too heartbroken to swallow a single bite.

Instead, I found that the owner’s grilling skills were actually top-notch.

When I finally made it home, I intended to write him one of those long, pleading essays for a reconciliation, just like I did when we went through our routine breakups at twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four.

But then my boss told me I had to go on a business trip. After nearly a month of being busy, I was practically entering a second honeymoon phase with my career in a neighboring city.

Jiang Yu finally couldn’t hold out any longer and called me. “Why haven’t you come to apologize yet?” Only then did I realize I’d forgotten something. Going through a breakup when you’re a little older is truly a hassle.

I could only ask him tentatively: “I’m so sorry, really. I’ve been so busy lately that I forgot to write the essay.” “How about… we just stay broken up?”

During the year our love was at its peak, the young general whose name shook the borderlands used all his military merit to petition my Imperial Father for my hand in marriage.

But three years later, a woman arrived at our door clutching a child, weeping and begging me to take them in.

My husband claimed he had simply had too much to drink and made a terrible mistake.

My mother-in-law said that since I had already ruined my husband’s career prospects, I could not go so far as to sever his bloodline as well.

My closest kin advised me to be magnanimous, telling me that this was simply how every mistress of a household in the capital lived.

Only my sister, with whom I had never seen eye to eye, patted my back and told me: “In the past, you let your Imperial Brother make your decisions for you.” “Later, you let your husband make your decisions for you.” “Now, it is time you learned to grow up on your own.” “After all, you have a little girl of your own now.”

I looked down at the tiny daughter in my arms, who was still sucking on her fingers.

I understood that if I were weak, my daughter would never know how to be strong.

If I were easily bullied, my daughter would never know how to be independent. This time, it was my turn to act.

My friend went on a trip to Tibet and unexpectedly vanished.

It wasn’t until much later that I discovered a tattoo on a drum that was identical to the one on her back.

I struck the human-skin drum. The sound was dull and heavy.

Suddenly, my friend burst in from outside. “Run!”

The day my fiancé came to break off our engagement, my mother was so excited that tears streamed down her face.

As it turned out, I was not her biological daughter.

She had adopted me only so I could take the calamity meant for her real daughter.

She said, “Now that the ordeal has been fulfilled, you ought to return to your own family.”

I packed my bundle. There was little I could take with me, which made for easy travel.

My birth mother was waiting by the back gate.

She had a booming voice and had come driving an ox cart-every inch an uncouth peasant woman who knew nothing of proper manners.

Because of her, everyone in the Marquis Manor looked down on me even more.

And yet, the one who would bring me back to the capital in splendor was precisely her.

After my Imperial Mother Consort died, I was given three foster mothers in succession.

Of those three foster mothers, some were deposed, and the others were ordered to die.

In the end, I landed in Beauty Lin’s care.

For three years, she and I lived together in peace, without incident.

Until she offended the wrong person and was thrown into the Office of Punishment.

My heart gave a jolt. Oh no. It looked like I was going to have to change foster mothers again.

Worse still, this time, she was the only one I wanted.

I was a female scripture teacher who recited sutras for the madam of the household.

Yet in the middle of the night, someone cornered me behind the incense-draped curtains and asked me who was better-looking: him or the Bodhisattva.

That night, I did not choose the Bodhisattva.

Unfortunately, after barely three months, he came to bid me farewell.

I thought he had simply grown tired of me, so I agreed without fuss.

From then on, he lived beneath the glow of red lanterns, lost in endless pleasure, while I returned alone to the ancient Buddha and my solitary lamp.

Who would have thought that later, when he learned I had been drowned in a pond… He went mad.

Zhou Ci and I were also a pair of resentful lovers, exchanging harsh words and blows, finally threatening, “Whoever doesn’t get divorced is a dog.”

On the way to the divorce, we cursed each other with the most venomous words we could muster.

But when the oil tanker crashed towards us, he jerked the steering wheel, using his side to take the impact.

He let me live 0.01 seconds longer.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the summer at the end of my second year of high school.

Zhou Ciye was holding a bouquet of flowers, asking if I would accept it.

The next second, his listless face lifted, full of gloom.

The moment our eyes met, I knew he had come back too.

When I was a child, I fought with wild dogs for food. On the verge of starvation, someone shared half a steamed bun with me.

To repay his kindness, I disguised myself as a boy and stayed by his side as a servant.

This man was once the most noble Crown Prince of the dynasty.

One day, he fell from grace, reduced to ruin, and was humiliated and trampled by his lifelong enemy.

Later, he became the mad emperor whom everyone feared.

Yet on a snowy night, he took his own life, and before his death, pleaded desperately:

“Yunling, don’t look at me… I’m so filthy.”

When I opened my eyes again, time had rewound twenty years.

The Imperial Tutor harbored the ambitions of a Wolf, the general eyed the throne like a tiger, and the imperial brother plotted in secret.

Only the Little Highness remained innocent and pure, completely unaware.

In this life, I have come only to protect him.

On the night of my birthday, my boyfriend said he had to work overtime.

But his childhood sweetheart just posted a selfie on her WeChat Moments, holding his arm, with the caption: “No matter when, my brother will drop everything to come find me, hehe.”

My eyes burned and I couldn’t help but comment:

“What the hell are you giggling about?”

When I was five, my father brought home a handsome deaf boy and made him my child husband.

I prided myself on being a progressive woman; since childhood, I always told people he was my brother. I never expected that, more than ten years later, one drunken night,

I slept with him – and forgot about it.