Pregnancy

I am a mushroom. But my master doesn’t see it that way.

Whenever I tell him I’m a mushroom that gained sentience, he just lets out a long, heavy sigh.

Aside from that, he’s very good to me. He cooks for me, buys me clothes, watches boring arthouse movies with me…

On every late night I spend curled up in the corner, after he gets home from working overtime, he quietly carries me back to bed.

He even told me he wanted to have a child with me. At that, I clutched my stomach and burst out laughing.

“Please. How could a human and a mushroom possibly have a baby?”

We reproduce by spores. Have you never heard of reproductive isolation?

…

Until one day, I stared at the pregnancy test with two bright lines on it and completely short-circuited.

While the concubines of the harem fought for favor, the Empress was wondering when the emperor would finally die.

The emperor and I had been married since our youth, but ours was a match arranged without either of us having any say.

After all these years, we had only ever treated each other with distant courtesy.

And as my son grew older by the day, I found myself hoping more and more that His Majesty might depart this world sooner rather than later-if only so all my years of diligently managing his harem would not have been in vain.

I was pregnant.

But I only wanted the baby, not the baby’s father.

With my belly about to become impossible to hide, I simply blocked him.

The very next day, though, he showed up outside my apartment and stopped me at my door.

When I saw his gaze settle on the swell of my stomach, I played it cool.

“What are you staring at? I just gained weight.”

At that, he looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Don’t worry. I don’t need any child support, and I won’t use this baby as an excuse to bother you. All you need to do is disappear completely-”

Before I could finish, he cut me off. “No.” “I want this child too.”

After we made love that night, I drifted off to sleep.

My husband, who never liked saying sweet words, suddenly said: “Honey, I love you.”

I opened my eyes.

That tone was all too familiar.

It was exactly the tone he used when he’d done something guilty.

I followed an underworld Big Brother for six years.

But on my birthday, he brought home a girl.

He was covered in blood, and the pretty, delicate girl was hiding in his arms.

From then on, the man who had indulged my every whim never looked at me again.

Everyone thought I loved Xu Chang but could never have him, and that I was heartbroken beyond words.

I only smiled and toyed with the watch on my wrist.

I was an undercover police officer planted inside Huaxi’s largest criminal gang.

I’d stayed by his side all these years for one reason: to treat him to a taste of prison food. So how could I possibly… fall in love with him?

On the night before our engagement, my fiancé got a call from his first love.

He left without a word and vanished for the entire night.

Calmly, I packed my things and called him to break up.

But when the call connected, a stranger answered.

“Who are you looking for?”

I contacted my fiancé’s parents, but they told me they were DINKs. They had no children, and they didn’t know me.

Everyone around me had forgotten that my fiancé had ever existed.

I touched my slightly swollen belly, horror crashing over me.

“Then who is the father of this child?”

My sister-in-law is the famed Rouge Tiger of Linan.

With a powdered face and thunderous methods, she keeps my brother so obedient he doesn’t dare take a concubine.

All the men of Linan laugh at him for being henpecked.

One day, my brother brought home a shy young woman named Yaoniang.

With a trembling voice, he stood protectively in front of her and said to my sister-in-law:

“Yaoniang and I have already been intimate. Whether you approve or not, I will make her my concubine today.”

My sister-in-law did not pick up the rolling pin again.

She only smiled and said, “Very well – I’ll let you have her.”