Chapter 1

Chapter 1

A cry soon rang out from the distance.

“Someone fell into the water!”

Calmly, I bit into the last candied hawthorn ball, its sweet-and-sour flavor bursting across my tongue.

After brushing the sugar crumbs from my hands, I decided to go watch the commotion.

After all, the Young Commandery Prince couldn’t swim.

And once Yun’e’s robes hit the water, they would drag her down like a thousand-pound weight.

If no one helped them, their chances did not look good.

But what did that have to do with me?

In my previous life, I hadn’t known that Yun’e and Murong Ling were kindred spirits.

The two of them had long since fallen for each other while exchanging poetry.

Today was the day they had arranged to admire the lotuses together.

Yun’e pretended to slip and dragged Murong Ling into the lake with her.

All so she could marry into the Commandery Prince’s Manor.

And me?

I had merely been passing over the corridor bridge and had glanced one extra time at the green lotuses in the pond.

When I saw Yun’e thrashing in the water, I jumped down from the bridge at once.

Her clothes were heavy, and she had swallowed water. She couldn’t swim at all.

I exhausted myself helping her out of her outer robe in the lake.

Only then did I manage to get her ashore.

I ordered my personal maid to take her to the women’s clinic.

Then I turned back toward the lake.

Murong Ling’s struggles were already growing weaker and weaker.

Gritting my teeth, I jumped in again.

But I barely had any strength left.

Murong Ling was tall and heavy.

I had to half swim, half drag him before I finally got him to the bank.

The moment I hauled him up,

a large crowd surged onto the corridor bridge.

They pointed and whispered at our drenched, overlapping bodies.

“Look! They’re holding each other!”

“Who knows whose young lord and young lady they are? How utterly disgraceful.”

I explained that I had only been saving him, but not a single person listened.

In the end, the marriage was still arranged under everyone’s pinched noses.

The gossip in the capital drowned me completely.

What hurt the most was Yun’e.

She wept before Father like a pear blossom in the rain.

“Sister did it on purpose. She’s such a strong swimmer-how could she possibly have stayed in the water with the Commandery Prince for so long that people came running? How shameless!”

I stared at her in disbelief.

“I lost my strength because I saved you first.”

With reddened eyes, she argued back, “You’re lying. I never even left the house!”

Afraid of being implicated, Yun’e pushed all the blame onto me.

Father was even more furious.

He picked up the teapot and hurled it at me.

“Your sister has never liked going out, yet you still dare to drag her into this!”

“Shameless! Utterly shameless!”