Childhood Friends

I posted a Moments update visible only to Song Mingqi and waited until three in the morning without a reply.

I messaged him privately: “Asleep?”

He sent back a smiley face: “Dead.”

I stared at the screen.

Could this seasoned fake-innocent schemer really be so rattled that he had dropped the act?

“Did you swallow dynamite or something?”

Three smiley faces in a row: “Yeah.

It kept me up till three.”

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.

After my fiancé, Xie Zhao, left on a long journey, I wrote him two letters asking him to make a decision.

The first was about my stepsister, who wanted my betrothal goose and had been crying and throwing tantrums over it.

The second was about his younger brother, who had taken a fancy to me and was being far too attentive and far too hard to shake off.

Xie Zhao had never liked my meek, timid nature to begin with. He had always wanted to call off this engagement.

So on the very day I sent the second letter, he had an old man bring me a message:

“Since she wants it, just indulge her.

“She’s young and doesn’t know any better. Surely you do?”

W-who was he talking about?

Seeing that I suspected him of delivering the wrong message, the old man lost his temper too.

“From ancient times to now, I’ve heard of giving away a wife, but never of giving away a betrothal goose!

“Besides, Second Young Master Xie is half a month younger than your sister.

“He obviously means for you to marry someone else!”

When I walked in, the young nanny was debating the literary achievements of the Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song with my fiancé.

She got so worked up that she raised her hand and thumped him on the chest.

“You’re the one who’s wrong!”

The man was silent for two seconds before a low laugh slipped out.

“Mm. I’m wrong. You’re right.”

I stood behind them, looking down at the custom wedding invitation in my hand, suddenly at a loss. Because honestly…

I really did like this design.

Everyone in the capital envies He Jingyao, the only wife of the powerful Chief Minister Shen. Yet she alone knows that her distant husband has filled a treasured sandalwood box with love letters to her elder sister.

When death sends Jingyao back to the day Shen Yanchu first proposed, she returns his betrothal jade and refuses to repeat their loveless marriage. But Shen has also returned with memories of their first life—and this time, he begs her not to leave him.

Caught between a calculating sister who sees marriage as a political bargain and a remorseful man who understood his heart too late, Jingyao walks away from the capital. In the freedom of Quliang City, she finally meets the love that had been waiting for her all along.

My elder sister once saved Prince Cheng in Yangzhou, back when he was afflicted with muteness.

When he recovered, he personally came to our door to ask for her hand.

But by then, my elder sister was already married and had borne a child. Holding her newborn in her arms, she smiled warmly.

“I am five years older than you, and I only gave birth to this child a few days ago.”

“My younger sister, however, is only a year apart from you. Perhaps she would be a better match.”

Later, Prince Cheng truly did ask to marry me.

But after our wedding, he treated me with the utmost cruelty, forever complaining that my temperament was worlds apart from my sister’s.

“I was wrong. For the bright moon in my heart, I settled for second best and made do by marrying you.”

“And because of that, I have spent my entire life making do.”

Now that I had been reborn, it was once again the day Prince Cheng came to our door.

My elder sister was just about to bring me up.

I spoke first, smiling calmly.

“Sister, I don’t like older men either.”

While packing my mom’s things, a receipt suddenly slipped out of an old cardboard box.

It read: April 8, 2006. Aigo MP3 player returned and refunded. Goods and payment settled in full. Total: 498 yuan.

I felt as if I’d been plunged into an ice cellar.

The MP3 player I had thought had been lost for twenty years, the MP3 player that became the trigger every time my mom and I fought, had appeared out of nowhere, just like that.

Clutching the receipt, I asked her numbly, “Back then… did you return that MP3 player?”

I was helping my mom sell grilled sausages by the roadside when a handsome guy in a cap scanned the QR code to pay. He gave his phone a little shake, signaling that the payment had gone through.

I smiled and nodded. Then my gaze suddenly sharpened, landing on the pale, prominent bone of his wrist.

There was a tiny black tattoo there.

I narrowed my eyes slightly and recognized it.

It was that bastard Chen Wen.

His friend came over, hooked an arm around his neck, and urged him on. “Come on, Chen Wen. Let’s go to the usual spot.”

But Chen Wen just had to do the opposite of what I wanted. He took two steps toward me, bent down, and met my eyes. A moment later, recognition dawned. He let out a laugh, his eyes curving like peach blossom petals.

“Is that… Boss Tang?”

“…”

My husband is very rich, but I don’t love him.

In university, he once used every trick in the book to pursue my roommate Jiang Sizhu. He sent luxury gifts one after another, and even made a grand gesture by sending nine thousand roses downstairs from the girls’ dormitory. All the girls in our dorm benefited; we carried armloads of roses back to our rooms, as if we were moving a flower bed. Only Jiang Sizhu remained indifferent. She even warned Pei Lu not to come looking for her again.

“He’s very rich and not bad-looking. You really don’t want him?”

I had a face mask on and finally asked the question I could never understand.

With such a beautiful face, she spent every day hanging around that senior who worked odd jobs everywhere.

“No way, a stuffy old bore like him? If you’re so interested, go after him yourself,” Jiang Sizhu said with disdain.

I rested my chin on my hand, thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Fine.”

“I’ll go after him.”

On my birthday, the Fourth Princess and I both set our hearts on the same pomegranate-blossom crown.

At a loss, Father told each of us to choose a young man from the imperial clan to ride and shoot on our behalf.

Whoever struck the kite first after it was released would win.

I chose Qin Yan, my dearest childhood friend.

I knew he could hit the mark with his eyes closed, and I was certain he would make my wish come true.

But all three of his arrows missed by a hair.

I hid in the attic and wept after losing, until Qin Yan came to find me and finally snapped in exasperation, “That enormous gold crown would never have suited you. Jade is better. Plain, pure, and far easier on the eyes.”

“Stop competing with the Fourth Princess over everything.”

Then, with the solemn patience of someone offering hard-won wisdom, he said, “Jiajia, you need to understand that sometimes being right for something matters more than winning it.”

I took his lesson to heart.

So years later, when Father held trials to choose my prince consort, Qin Yan placed first in both the civil and martial examinations.

And I still did not choose him.