Chapter 2

Chapter 2

At the New Year’s Eve banquet, the Emperor asked every Imperial Concubine to submit a New Year’s wish.

He would draw one lucky lady and fulfill her wish.

I perfunctorily scribbled down: “Let me be the Empress for a bit.”

Then I handed it in.

There were over forty of us; the odds of me being chosen were incredibly low.

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect that the heavens wanted me dead.

The Emperor actually picked mine, and what’s more, he read it aloud.

“Annual Slacker Report.”

My chopsticks hit the floor.

Oh no, I handed in the wrong paper.

How did I end up submitting my annual report?

I just have too much free time, and when people are idle, they tend to enjoy writing summaries.

And the Emperor was clearly too bored himself, because he insisted on reading my annual report.

“This year, your name tag was flipped nineteen times. Of those, you were intercepted thirteen times. You actually served in the bedchamber six times, during three of which the Emperor couldn’t perform.”

Fortunately, there were no outsiders at the family banquet.

The Emperor remained silent for a long while before trying to save face. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t perform. It’s just that for a man, there are always those few days…”

The Imperial Concubines looked left and right, nodding in silent agreement.

Feeling aggrieved, the Emperor slapped the report onto the table.

The Noble Consort was sitting to his right. She picked up the report and began to read it out with great poise.

“This year, you knelt over a thousand times. You called the Noble Consort a ‘bitch’ over ten thousand times, but the number of times you actually said it to her face was zero.”

The Noble Consort fell silent too.

Whispers broke out among the crowd.

Breaking into a cold sweat, I scrambled out from my seat on all fours and performed my first kneel of the New Year.

“Bitch-ah, no, Noble Consort, please appease your anger!”

The Noble Consort tapped her fingers on the table. She tossed the scroll down and ordered me to finish reading it while kneeling.

Enduring an overwhelming sense of shame, I began to recite loudly.

“Do you remember the Mid-Autumn Banquet? The talent you performed was balancing a pot of wine on your upturned backside, which resulted in half a month’s stipend being docked.”