Short Story

My mother’s new husband’s son called me a gold-digging freeloader, said my mother had seduced his father, and declared us both shameless sluts.

I cornered him against the wall and attacked his lips with my tongue.

“That’s right! My mom seduced your dad, and now I want to seduce you!”

The school heartthrob claimed I had a crush on him, mocked me for dreaming above my station, then photocopied my secret diary and scattered the pages all over campus.

I pasted his face over a photo of the hottest host at a male revue, then grabbed his ass in front of the entire school.

“Are you jealous because I didn’t book you last weekend?”

When my homeroom teacher said I was a troublemaker and threatened to punish me, I tied him up instead.

“When a student misbehaves, her teacher is to blame—so please accept your punishment, sir!”

Mom brought home the dead crabs our neighbor had thrown away and cooked them with the live ones.

“One for your big sister, one for your little brother, and one for your little sister.

See how fair Mommy is?”

But my little sister spat out her first mouthful of crab roe.

“Mom, I think this crab smells bad…”

Mom slammed down her bowl in a rage.

“Why would yours be the only bad one?

Don’t waste food.

Finish it!”

That night, my sister got food poisoning.

But Mom insisted on making our neighbor pay the medical bills, delaying treatment until my sister died.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that same evening.

I immediately switched my sister’s crab with Mom’s.

“Hers is much too big.

We should give it to Mom!”

Then I shelled the dead crab in my own bowl and handed it to my brother.

“You’re still growing, Xingxing.

Have mine!”

My very first day in the palace scared the hell out of me.

Did everyone here have a thing for pigs?

The emperor was fat enough to be sent to slaughter, yet these women were desperately in love with him, practically beating each other bloody for a chance to sleep with him.

Afraid he might eat me in the middle of the night, I pleaded illness to avoid his attentions.

That was how I met the other women in the palace who stayed out of the competition.

They didn’t like the emperor.

Their hearts belonged to the Third Prince, whom they praised as a gentleman without equal.

Then I spotted an alien at a palace banquet, and they insisted he was the Third Prince.

The guy’s face was an equilateral triangle.

Certainly no one else like him in the world.

I’d planned to keep my head down in the palace for the rest of my life.

But one day, as I strolled by the lotus pond, the emperor smiled at me with his fat pig face.

“I’m the Third Prince.

May I ask which palace you belong to, my lady?”

Your Majesty, do you take me for an idiot?

Not long after I married the crown prince, he was deposed.

We spent ten years imprisoned together in a derelict garden.

I tilled the soil and planted vegetables, doing everything I could to stay alive.

Half out of his mind, he kicked my vegetables to pieces, muttering, “Thank goodness it isn’t Qianyi locked up in here.”

Qianyi was the cousin who had come to live with my family.

She was now Prince Cheng’s consort.

I had never known the deposed crown prince had feelings for her.

His ravings made a mockery of the ten years I had spent at his side.

Later, Prince Cheng ascended the throne and issued two decrees.

One sentenced the deposed crown prince to death by poisoned wine.

The other sent me to cultivate the Way in a Taoist temple.

I became Master Taihui of Purple Cloud Temple.

Less than two years later, I became the new emperor’s Consort Yu.

People sneered at my wiles, saying I had bewitched the emperor so thoroughly that he neglected even his lawful wife.

My cousin demanded bitterly to know why I had stolen her husband, why I had not followed the deposed crown prince to the grave.

The new emperor hated me too.

He hated me because, years before, I had seen him wounded and left him there to attend the consort selection.

His grave injuries had failed to heal.

He had lost his chance and spent years scheming before he finally won the throne.

Yet later, when a deadly poison left me confined to my sickbed, he cast aside his entire harem and used blood drawn from his own heart to save me.

As I lay dying, he held me and wept in anguish.

“As long as you live, I’ll agree to anything.”

“I’ll make you empress.”

“I’ll let your parents come back to the capital.”

“Your brother, your sister-in-law, your nephew—all of them.”

“Only live.”

Tears blurred my sight.

I did not even have the strength to cry.

Too late.

Why couldn’t he have granted my wish sooner?

Why had he made my whole life so miserable?

Then I was given another life.

Mother told me joyfully that the empress had specifically summoned me to the consort-selection banquet.

I looked at my cousin, who could hardly contain her eagerness, then lowered my eyes and said softly, “I don’t want to go.”

I had been able to see the floating comments since I was very small.

They told me I would spend seven bitter years beside a fallen prince, only to be cast aside when he became emperor.

He would regret it when I was dying, turn back time, and treasure me in another life.

The comments told me to hold on.

But if happiness was certain, why couldn’t I have it in this life?

When the Fifth Prince fell from favor, I was the first maid to pay for a transfer.

The comments went wild.

Without me, how was their story supposed to continue?

I had fallen for a shadow guard.

I am Gu Qianyu, the chancellor’s daughter, and I have unexpectedly acquired a unique gift.

I can see whether a man has been faithful.

If he has been with only one woman, a cucumber floats above his head.

The number of cucumbers increases with the number of women he has had.

The man I am supposed to marry is the heir to the Marquis of Wuling.

A rare specimen of male virtue, scrupulously chaste.

Famous for it throughout the capital.

On the day he came to ask for my hand, he stood tall and elegant, every inch the gentleman.

But when I looked up, the cucumbers above his head stretched all the way out of our residence.

With a woebegone face, I told Mother, “Mother, this is a very, very dirty cucumber!”

“I won’t marry him!”

On our wedding night, my husband confessed that he could neither father children nor consummate our marriage.

He had married me to repay me for saving his life.

His solution?

Invite his devastatingly handsome cousin to father our child, then raise the baby together.

I was a very traditional woman, of course.

But his cousin was handsome—and the friend he brought along was handsome too.

My father was a philanderer.

His mistress had borne him a son, and he doted on the boy.

Desperate to win back his affection, my mother prayed day and night for a son—only to give birth to me, a girl.

Six years later, the mistress’s son passed the entry-level civil service examinations.

He arrived at our door with a whole entourage, demanding that his mother be made a wife of equal standing and that he be entered in the family genealogy.

No one knew he was the male lead of this novel.

And I had transmigrated into it.

I was a condemned slave, due to be beheaded in the autumn.

To buy myself a little more time, I decided to get pregnant.

I set my sights on the cold, aloof jailer.

With my slender waist and full hips, I tried every trick I knew to seduce him.

At first he scorned me.

Once he’d had a taste, he came back night after night, unwilling to let me go.

The day a physician confirmed my pregnancy, a curtained sedan chair was carried into the dungeon.

As they helped me inside, I still had no idea what was happening.

“What is this for?”

The warden beamed at me.

“Miss Liu, you’re carrying His Grace’s child.

They’ve come to take you home to a life of comfort.”