Misunderstandings

I was born to perform.

When I discovered that my husband from a marriage of convenience was only cold and aloof on the surface-and insatiable underneath-I helped myself to the feast.

I loved watching still waters ripple endlessly under my touch.

But I seemed to have taken the act a little too far. It wasn’t just in bed that I clung to him. I lost control outside the bedroom too.

One day, when I brought lunch to his office again, I overheard his friend teasing him.

“Who was it that said this was just a business arrangement and you’d get divorced after three months? Now you go home at six thirty sharp every day. Aren’t you sick of it?”

After a few seconds of silence, Qin Xian answered.

“I am.”

I stood outside the door, staring down at the lunchbox in my hands.

So his workday didn’t actually end at ten thirty. It ended at six thirty.

I decided it was time to rein in my urge to perform.

I remained endlessly enthusiastic in bed, but I never initiated another message to him.

On the day our contract expired, I cheerfully handed him the divorce papers. Qin Xian’s eyes instantly darkened.

“All this time, did you see me as your husband-or as a vibrator?”

When I was forced to propose to Pei Zhan, I saw his group chat:

[If she dares bring up marriage, I’ll dump her on the spot.]

I blinked, and my heart suddenly soared.

Every one of Pei Zhan’s ex-girlfriends had received a hefty breakup settlement.

I had waited three years.

Finally, it was my turn.

Everyone in the capital knew I was in love with Fifth Young Master Xie.

But to refuse the marriage, he would rather shave his head and enter Buddhist cultivation.

Only then did I learn that all his tender warmth toward me had merely been a way to use me to curry favor with the Wang family.

I became the laughingstock of the entire capital.

Later, when the loyal ministers of the Xie family were falsely accused, I set aside the past and helped clear their name.

On the night the Xie family regained its innocence, Buddhist Heir Xie rushed over through the rain and said he would return to secular life to marry me.

I stared in astonishment at his face, so certain of victory.

From behind the curtain, the young courtesan reached out and hooked an arm around my shoulders. “Sister, you were just saying you were devoted to someone like me. How are you suddenly marrying someone else?”

I hurried to coax him. “Of course I’m not marrying him. He’s just talking nonsense.”

Fifth Young Master Xie, always so cool and composed, stood there blankly, so devastated that he snapped the prayer beads around his wrist.

I came to the city looking for work, and somehow ended up as the male secretary to a young, domineering CEO.

Like an idiot, I asked him, “Bro, I don’t have much schooling. What can I do?”

The CEO frowned around the cigarette between his lips and motioned for me to bend lower. “You can.”

Three months later, I was standing beside the CEO’s bed while he shifted over with his laptop in his arms to make room for me, then reached out to blow-dry my hair.

All at once, it hit me.

Wait.

Something about this doesn’t seem right.

Four years ago, Gu Jinzhi, the Crown Prince of the Beijing Circle, fell in love with me at first sight.

After three years of relentless pursuit, I finally gave in.

In the first year of our relationship, he started pestering me to get married.

I was hesitant, but I couldn’t withstand his endless coaxing.

In the end, I brought him home to meet my parents.

But that day, outside the private room, I heard one of his buddies ask him, “You’ve met her parents now. When’s the wedding?”

Gu Jinzhi clicked his tongue and said unhurriedly, “All of a sudden, I don’t want to get married that much anymore.”

Someone beside him jeered, “Oh, stop pretending. You spent three years chasing that untouchable ice queen. You’d really give her up?”

“Ice queen?”

I heard him let out a scoff.

“If you saw how her parents treat her, you’d feel the same way I do.”

“The same how?”

“That she’s nothing special after all.”

After winning the war, I entered the capital, and the Old Emperor asked what reward I wanted.

I pointed at the handsome man in purple robes and a golden belt standing in the hall. “I beg Your Majesty to grant me a marriage. I am carrying his child, and he promised he would marry me!”

The elderly eunuch beside the emperor hurriedly tried to stop me. “General, mind your words. This is the Second Prince.”

A faint, languid voice sounded behind me. “Whose child are you carrying?

“Isn’t your belly full of roast duck, roast chicken, candied hawthorn, red bean pastries, dried sweet potatoes…”

I turned to look, only to find that the handsome man who had just spoken looked exactly like the Second Prince.

I made a split-second decision and cupped my fists toward His Majesty. “If that one won’t marry me, this one will do!”

The elderly eunuch was beside himself with panic. “My dear ancestor, this is the Crown Prince!”

I was the CEO’s white moonlight, but I had gone dark.

“So you can fly overseas for business, but you can’t come overseas to see me? Is it that you can’t afford a ticket, or that you can’t make the time?”

“You keep saying I’m your white moonlight, then turn around and find a substitute. If your feelings are that cheap, don’t ever tell anyone you liked me.”

“I don’t want a man who’s been tainted. Don’t come looking for me again.”

On the day of the Flower-Viewing Banquet,

I accidentally spent a night of passion with Second Young Master Yan.

Forced to abandon my previous engagement, I was hastily married into Prince Yan’s Mansion.

I had thought such a noble household would be impossible to survive in.

Who would have guessed that after the wedding, my mother-in-law would be kind, my husband easy to coax, and my children sensible?

Aside from taking medicine, I never suffered any real hardship.

Comfortably and contentedly, I lived to the age of seventy-five.

On my deathbed, as I looked back on the past, I could not help but take Yan Zhao’s hand.

“In this life, you and I came together by a twist of fate, but it turned out rather well.”

“If there is a next life, would you be willing to be with me again…”

To my surprise, Yan Zhao’s face suddenly went cold.

“Shen Yao, if we could live this life over, you would still want to have an illicit affair with me without so much as a matchmaker?”

“What do you take me for? It is not as if I cannot live without you!”

Seriously?

We already had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, yet he was still this resentful?

He should have said so sooner.

Then the husband I had known since childhood, the one who was supposed to marry into my family, would not have ended up leaving alone after I broke off the marriage.

He would not have died so young in a distant land.

Thinking of Rong Zhen, I grew even more melancholy.

There had been three perfectly good people. How had I ended up the only one to live a happy, peaceful life?

My eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the Flower-Viewing Banquet.

In the two years since my wedding, my husband had never once come home.

Lonely beyond endurance, I bought a convicted slave to warm my bed.

He was certainly diligent between the sheets, but as a person, he was far too vain.

My purse couldn’t take it, so I simply kept him on a poor man’s budget.

Unable to stomach a life of coarse tea and plain meals, he roared, “I don’t want to be your husband anymore!”

Puzzled, I said, “I’m already married. You’re just my kept man.”

His eyes went bloodshot as he gnashed his teeth. “You’re this broke, and you’re still trying to keep a lover on the side like everyone else?!”

And with that, we went our separate ways.

I packed my things and returned to the capital, where I heard that my long-missing brother-in-law had finally come back.

He was kneeling in the ancestral hall and had been given ten lashes.

My mother-in-law was so furious she cursed, “You actually fell for a married woman! Have you no shame at all?!”

I hurried forward to plead on his behalf.

To my surprise, my brother-in-law turned his head, looked at me, and slowly smiled. “Sister-in-law, have you been well?”

I was stunned.

Wasn’t this my vain, status-obsessed kept man?!

I wanted to stroke the aloof campus heartthrob’s…

cat.

In the middle of the night, I finally couldn’t hold back anymore and sent him a message:

[Hey, classmate, can I stroke it? Just once!]

Campus Heartthrob: [Classmate, that’s a little forward of you.]

I refused to give up.

[I’m really good with my hands. I guarantee I’ll make it comfortable! You just run one hand from head to tail, right?]

The other side went silent.

An hour later, the campus heartthrob finally replied:

[One hand won’t work.]

[You can’t get a proper grip.]