Slice of Life

My best friend pinned me against the windowsill when my heat struck without warning.

My whole body went weak, my breaths burning, like a fish dragged onto shore and left gasping for air.

He held my restless body down, a dangerously enticing smile curling at his lips.

“Beg me, and maybe I’ll consider sneaking in a little bite.”

I gazed at him through misty, tear-bright eyes.

“Please~”

The Empress had devised an elegant diversion: if a prince shot down a kite bearing a noblewoman’s name, he could choose her as his consort.

I made a point of running over to remind the Third Prince.

“That huge red butterfly kite is mine.

Don’t mix it up with the others later.”

He grinned and teased me.

“Are you that eager to marry me?”

“Fine.

I’ll think about it.

If I can’t hit anyone else’s, I’ll shoot yours.”

I flushed and spat at him in mock disgust.

“Plenty of men want to marry me.

I’m only afraid you’ll fail to win me and start bawling.”

Pei Qing and I had grown up together, bickering and playing since childhood.

It was the most ordinary kind of banter between us, but I knew he would take my words to heart.

Yet once the contest began, Pei Qing kept aiming at my elder sister’s kite without so much as glancing at mine.

My kite was so conspicuous.

He could not possibly have missed it.

I watched several arrows skim past it.

I grew anxious that someone else might shoot it down.

I had no choice but to let it climb higher and higher, beyond everyone’s reach.

Then, without warning, the string in my hand snapped.

The kite swayed as it fell—and landed on the Crown Prince, who had set his heart on renouncing the world for a Buddhist monastery.

Ah Shuang transmigrates into an imperial harem as an ordinary palace maid with one mission: lie low until the story ends and earn five million yuan. Unfortunately, every attempt to avoid attention is mistaken for brilliant strategy, propelling her from lowly servant to the most trusted—and misunderstood—woman in the palace. Between feuding consorts, ambitious princes, accidental prophecies, and a return trip she never planned, Ah Shuang must survive the legends everyone else keeps inventing about her.

I went to the hospital and burst into tears in Uncle Tang’s arms—only for Mom to catch us.

I tried to run, but he caught my wrist. “We’re not even related by blood. What are you afraid of?”

When I was on the verge of death, Cheng An borrowed one tael of silver and bought me to be his wife.

He was so poor he could barely feed himself, yet he bought medicine on credit and saved my life.

Later, I told him, “If you don’t despise me for having once served as another man’s concubine, I am willing to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Cheng An nodded firmly. “Then it’s settled. A lifetime.”

After Jiang Can dies in a plane crash, her grandmother, He Xiuhua, refuses to let hope die with her. Unseen by the living, Jiang Can’s spirit watches as Grandma searches, grieves, and waits through years of scams, protests, and an ocean-spanning hunt—until enduring love finally brings a family home.

Dad bought a new electric scooter.

My brother climbed onto the back seat, and my sister was lifted onto the footboard.

I ran behind them, grinning so hard my teeth showed.

Dad went around and around, but never once stopped to give me a turn.

When I could not keep up anymore, I went to ask Mom to speak for me.

Then I heard her talking about me.

“We only had her so we could use the cord blood for her sister, but who knew her sister had been misdiagnosed?”

“Oh, what a waste—all that suffering for nothing!”

I had just turned six that day, and the words I wanted to say stayed trapped behind my lips, so I never asked for a ride again.

For years afterward, I ran the road from home to school.

Then the provincial team recruited me, and I was interviewed.

Dad wheeled out that same electric scooter.

“It’s all thanks to me training her with this thing, because how else could she run so fast?”

A diary chronicling the last two months of my life…

Maybe I was simply born unworthy of love. Why else would everyone who loved me leave?

Meng Fanyu carried himself with effortless distinction.

I thought that even if we eventually broke up, having him as my first love would leave me with no regrets.

So I pursued him with everything I had.

Eventually, I won him over, and he laid down three rules: we would date, never marry, and break up when we graduated.

For three years, we loved each other with abandon.

On graduation day, I was the one who ended it, but he went back on our agreement.

Our conversation fell apart, and Meng Fanyu lowered his proud head with a bitter laugh.

He told me I had better pray we never met again.

From then on, I did everything I could to avoid him.

But with the slightest turn of fate, the world can become very small, and two people who once belonged to each other are bound to meet again.

In the fifth year since he took me for himself, the powerful young heir finally grew tired of me.

He handed me a bank card with a lazy smile. “Your childhood sweetheart isn’t actually dead.”

“Go find him.”

I stared at the address in my hand for a long time—so long that he lost patience, hauled me out of bed, and drawled, “I’ll give you a ride. Move your things out after today.”

He had just pulled on his coat and started looking for his car keys when his phone rang.

On the other end, his childhood friend was sobbing anxiously. “If you break up with her, what’s going to happen to Xu Xinghe and me?”