Betrayal

“Madam, I’m planning to take a concubine.”

When Duan Qing said that, I was ironing the ceremonial robes he would wear to the palace tomorrow.

At his words, I nearly knocked over the iron brazier full of burning charcoal.

He sat there with one leg crossed over the other and went on as if it had nothing to do with me. “I’m bringing Miss Zhou into the household. A noblewoman from the former dynasty. You’ve met her.”

“Back when I followed the Emperor to fight for this empire, I lived with my head tied to my belt. Now that I’ve been made a duke, what’s wrong with taking the legitimate daughter of a marquis’s household as a concubine?”

“Old Han’s family are illiterate peasants, and even he married a girl from an earl’s household as his second wife!”

I looked at the utter entitlement on his face.

Then I took a deep breath. What was meant to come had come at last.

At thirty-eight, after spending half my life enduring hardship with him, it was time I enjoyed some peace and comfort.

And so, in the year I turned thirty-nine,

I decided to become a happy widow and savor the good life.

After my Senior Sister died, Master brought back a Seductress Spirit.

The Seductress Spirit looked exactly like Senior Sister, only far more alluring.

Seductress Spirits were wanton and wicked by nature. All she had to do was crook a finger, and my senior brothers would slip in and out of her bedchamber night after night.

She had stolen Senior Sister’s face and used it to do every filthy, degrading thing imaginable. I hated her to the bone.

But when I went to kill her, she took out a plum candy and spoke in a voice gentle enough to bewitch me:

“Since I’ve already used this skin, I have to fulfill its original owner’s dying wish.

“Seductress Spirits have their own rules. But do you want to avenge your Senior Sister with your own hands?”

When I was young, I found the Crown Princess and took her begging for three years.

Later, after she was retrieved, the Emperor recognized me as his adopted son.

Everyone assumed I would marry the Crown Princess.

But she became engaged to the Duke’s legitimate son.

On her birthday, she declared with a mocking smile in front of everyone: “How could someone of royal blood be matched with a beggar?”

I raised my cup and sincerely wished her a worry-free life, year after year.

She didn’t know yet that I had already accepted the imperial decree of a marriage alliance.

And from that year on, she would have no worries, and no Ziyou.

Chi Heng pretended to be poor and became my kept boyfriend.

Each month, I scraped together five hundred yuan from my living expenses to give him, and this went on for a year and a half.

As graduation approached, I finally found out:

He wasn’t a poor student on loans, but a young master who spent money like water.

He’d even been using someone else’s name the whole time.

The young master condescended to invite me to go abroad with him.

His friends all said I was lucky-with just a kind little white flower persona, I could climb up the social ladder.

Under his gaze, brimming with confidence that he’d get what he wanted,

I shook my head and said gently, “Better not.”

“I’m here to break up with you.”

My boyfriend had depression.

Medication and sessions with specialists cost over ten thousand a month.

To help him get better, I took on art commissions and delivered takeout day and night. Even my friends warned me to be careful before I worked myself to death.

Then one day, I managed to grab an errand order from a wealthy villa district.

The high-end Japanese takeout was worth eighteen thousand. I held it with both hands and handed it to the customer with the utmost respect.

But when I lifted my eyes, I saw my boyfriend-who should have been in therapy-standing in the doorway, staring at me in utter shock.

In the seventh year of having a crush on my childhood friend, encouraged by my best friend,

I carried flowers and a cake onto an overnight train to confess my feelings to him.

But on a basketball court roaring with noise and people,

I ran straight into the sight of the two of them kissing.

With his arm around my best friend, my childhood friend asked coldly, “What are you doing here? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Disheveled and humiliated, I was just about to explain

when his roommate beside him let out a soft laugh. “My girlfriend came to bring me a cake. What’s it got to do with you?”

At seventeen, the old madam gave the head maids in the courtyard two choices.

Either become concubines to the masters of the various branches, or become the wife of a steward from the outer quarters.

There were four of us. Three chose to be concubines; only Yuchuan chose the steward.

She asked me why. I lowered my head and thought silently:

Because I don’t want my children to be servants anymore.

After getting married, I found out my husband had once loved an ex-girlfriend deeply.

On the eve of her wedding, that woman drove through the night and gave herself to him, just to say goodbye to her youth.

When I found out, my husband begged me not to expose it. “Otherwise, her whole life will be ruined.”

On Xu Anran’s wedding day, my lover jumped from the eighteenth floor.

When I opened the door to his studio, it was filled with portraits of Xu Anran.

The brushstrokes were rough and intense, yet carried the fervor of his boundless love.

A friend said, “Shen Qingqie loved Anran for ten years. She was his only light.”

When I opened my eyes again, I saw Shen Qingqie being cornered by the school bully in the classroom. I silently closed the door.

Later, he knocked on my window in the rain, his voice hoarse and full of despair.

“Ranran, don’t you want me anymore…?”

On the third day after being diagnosed with Stomach Cancer, I chose a grave for myself.

They say the feng shui is especially good.

It’s supposed to bless me so that in my next life, I won’t be the real daughter everyone despises.

No one will steal my parents, my brother, or everything else from me.

No longer… unloved.

I burned my photos and clothes, erased every trace of my existence.

Then I slit my wrists, lay down in the bathtub, and waited peacefully for death.

But then the Cemetery Center suddenly called me:

“Miss Lu, we’re terribly sorry.”

“Two Agents accidentally sold the same plot.”

“This grave was also sold to another gentleman.”

“Would you… mind moving your grave?”