chapter 1

chapter 1

In my fifth year after being transported to ancient times, I saw my boyfriend from my previous life on the street.

The Crown Prince was making an inspection tour. Wang Yinyuan had been clamoring for days about claiming the best viewing spot, and she dragged me out with her. I had not wanted to come. The last time, she had hauled me out to watch a general depart for war. We stood beside the road and got a faceful of yellow dust. Wang Yinyuan grinned and asked me,

“Worth coming, wasn’t it?”

Only her teeth remained white in her dust-covered face. Not wanting to spoil her fun, I said, “Absolutely, absolutely,” while thinking, I’ve watched a grand military parade before! From an air-conditioned classroom, no less.

Wang Yinyuan was the daughter of my neighbors. Old Wang loved money, and she had an older brother named Wang Jinbao. The family sold meat, so they ate better than anyone else in the alley and looked better too. In this age, good food mattered more than any genes. Wang Jinbao was the handsomest young man for miles around, and Wang Yinyuan the prettiest young woman.

My own situation was rather more miserable. The cheap father I’d acquired in this life was a would-be scholar who had failed the examinations time after time. He lived by writing things for others and accepting help from my maternal grandmother’s family. As my cheap mother embroidered, she would always tell me not to marry a man for his future potential—only for what he had now. Ideally, I should make a real effort and marry Wang Jinbao in one fell swoop.

The thought of marrying an ancient man in this life gave me the creeps.

Wang Yinyuan tugged at my sleeve and pleaded, “Come on. They say the Crown Prince is terribly handsome—even handsomer than my brother.”

Probably fatter than your brother, at least.

Then she shared a bowl of meat broth with me, and I could no longer hold out. Apparently my principles were worth exactly that much now. In my last life, with meat everywhere, I had refused to eat it, living on rabbit food to lose weight and calculating the calories in every meal. It felt like another lifetime.

It was another lifetime. And I could never go back. When I first arrived in ancient times, I tried every method I could think of. In the end, the mother of this body cut me down from a hanging rope and clung to me, wailing. After I was saved, I lay in bed every day, unable to do anything. I could not even lift a finger. I merely stared blankly at the rafters.

Mother wiped her tears beside me. “Your father was like this after he failed the examination for the tenth time. Too much pent-up misery, they said. But you’re so young. How did you come down with such an illness?”

So it turned out I had depression.

I no longer remember how I recovered. Father took his meager income and bought me dose after dose of herbal medicine. We could not afford an acupuncturist, so Mother held an embroidery needle in trembling fingers and tested it on herself, hoping she might learn to cure me. I wept, fell silent, slept, then waited for the sun to rise again.

Once I realized this sun was, after all, the very same sun I had seen in the modern world, my illness gradually receded.

I thought: I will live well in this world. I will treat these bargain-bin parents as my own.

Heaven played a monstrous joke on me. Just as I was ready to seal away everything from the past, I saw Jiang Shen.

That day, Wang Yinyuan and I stood jostling along the street for an hour until our legs went numb. At last the palace banners appeared to clear the way. The people behind us surged forward, and Wang Yinyuan spat, “Pah! Never heard of first come, first served? Anyone less beautiful than yours truly can stand at the back!”

Someone laughed. “Wang Yinyuan, you actually think the Crown Prince might fancy you?”

Wang Yinyuan put on a bashful expression. “Who can say?”

The Crown Prince did not ride in a palanquin. He came down the street on horseback. As he passed me, he turned his face slightly and spotted me at once, frozen amid the crowd. I saw his lips move. He called, “Lu Yi?”

His voice was drowned beneath the tidal roar of people kneeling and offering greetings, but I saw it clearly. He had spoken my name.

Wang Yinyuan knelt beside me and rapped me with her knuckles. “You’ve really gone stupid staring at a nobleman! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Tears streamed down my face. He was not some nobleman. He was my lover, someone from the same world as me.

That evening, people from the palace came to our door.

The messenger was a young eunuch. He said I resembled an old acquaintance of the Crown Prince and had been invited to the palace for a meeting.

The writing brush fell from Father’s hand, splattering ink over his shoes. Trembling, he asked, “Sir, are you certain it was my daughter he requested by name?”

The young eunuch laughed in his high voice. “Oh, venerable sir! Who else in this alley caught His Highness’s eye during his tour?”

Mother’s face had gone pale too. Struggling to keep herself upright, she asked, “Once she leaves, when will she return?”

“Madam, there’s no need to worry. Your girl is destined for great fortune!”

I squeezed Mother’s hand. “Don’t worry. I will be fine.”

There was much more I could not tell her, but I knew Jiang Shen would never let anything happen to me.

Mother tried to force a smile and failed miserably.

And so I was invited into a small palanquin bound for the Eastern Palace. Through the window, I watched Mother try to follow but lose her courage. She collapsed onto the ground as Father tried to help her up. The little dirt road of Paulownia Blossom Alley fell behind the palanquin.

The window was so narrow. I thrust out a hand and waved, still clutching the handkerchief Mother had embroidered for me.

“Father! Mother!” I called. “Wait for me to come home!”

It was another day before I saw Jiang Shen again.

The palace maids scrubbed me twice, until my entire body was red, then changed every garment I wore from head to toe. I had no idea where they took my old clothes.

People streamed in and out. One group bathed me, another served my food, and still another stood around the room with lowered heads like so many decorative vases.

Unless I asked a question, no one spoke to me. Every motion was light, efficient, and performed with the least possible sound.

It reminded me of my senior year in my previous life, when I transferred into a new class. Not a single person spoke during breaks; everyone studied. It nearly suffocated me.

One day I spun a pen on my desk, fumbled it, and struck the leg of the student beside the aisle.

I apologized again and again as we both bent to retrieve it. His was the most beautiful hand I had ever seen—long fingers, well-defined knuckles, pale skin with faint blue veins beneath. The way he caught the pen was almost like a man taking hold of a flute.

I said, “Thank you, classmate. Sorry, classmate. Classmate, you have really beautiful hands.”

Later, I asked Jiang Shen what his first impression of me had been. He said, “You were exceptionally… candid.”

We were skipping evening study together when he said it. Jiang Shen took me to his secret place in the gym equipment room, where a flight of stairs led to a rooftop that was always locked. The equipment room was dark. I stepped on a small barbell and nearly slipped. From the stairs, Jiang Shen held out his hand.

“Come.”

He was so straightforward that I became a little shy. It was the first time we held hands. With the thin cuff of my school uniform between us, my fingers remaining outside that layer of cloth, I felt the tremor of his pulse.

How could it normally have been so distinct? Later, I thought that in the dark equipment room, the boy’s heart must have been pounding just as violently as mine.

As I drifted through these memories, the palace maid who had been posing like a vase suddenly moved. I nearly screamed.

“Miss, it is time to wash and dress. His Highness said he will dine here tonight.”

“Didn’t I just wash this morning?”

For once, the maid lifted her head to look at me. “Miss, these are the rules.”

Fine. Rules were rules. Even in modern times, didn’t you have to labor over your makeup before meeting your boyfriend? Resigned, I rose and let the maid do as she pleased with me.

I had once heard a story about bandits who kidnapped people for ransom and first ordered their captives to undress. Those who squirmed and refused came from poor families. Those who stripped without batting an eye before a crowd were accustomed to servants waiting on their naked bodies and must be the sons or daughters of rich households.

I was clearly a poor person.

To ease my embarrassment, I asked the maid amid the curling steam, “What is your name?”

“This servant is called Dicui.”

“My name is Lu Yi.”

My name and appearance were identical to those in my previous life, and Jiang Shen’s probably were as well. In that life, my parents fell in love at the Summer Palace while they were in university; by naming me Yi, they had secretly flaunted their romance. In this life, my repeatedly unsuccessful, book-worn father had plucked a line from an ancient text: “Though one fare poorly in a humble lane, it is still enough to nourish the spirit and preserve one’s years.” He hoped I could grow up well even amid poverty.

My nose stung at the thought.

Dicui’s hands did not pause as she flattered me. “The young lady has a crisp, elegant name and is beautiful as well.”

I asked again, “Your Crown Prince… what sort of man is he?”

Besides my joy at seeing Jiang Shen after five years, I felt some apprehension. He was the Crown Prince now, after all, and I did not know how long he had occupied that position. If the Crown Prince had not been Jiang Shen and had suddenly become entangled with me, I would have been as terrified as my parents.

But Dicui merely said, “Forgive me, miss. This servant does not dare gossip about her master.”

I sighed and let her dry me and rub perfumed balm over my skin. My body stayed rigid the entire time. Did she really have to put it there too?

Jiang Shen arrived at dusk. He was still so tall, and ancient doorways were low. When he stood in the entrance, he blocked all the light.

Dicui and the other palace maids dropped to their knees. I instinctively began to kneel with them, only to hear him say,

“No need.”

My knees were still half bent when he swept me into his arms.

Jiang Shen’s unfamiliar scent enveloped me. It smelled rich and complex—could this be the legendary ambergris? The kid was certainly living well now. Though I had heard ambergris was actually sperm-whale poop…

My mind darted through this nonsense, perhaps trying to conceal some unease buried in my heart. Then something wet touched my neck, and Jiang Shen said through a sob,

“Lu Yi, the moment I saw you, I knew it was you… It really is you.”

I let out a soft breath. At that moment, my tears finally fell too.