A Guide to Slacking Off in the Harem: The Leisurely Retirement of an Idle Consort

On her seventh straight day of overtime, Li Wei toppled headfirst into her computer screen and woke up as a sixteen-year-old imperial consort in a harem novel, who had died of shame and heartbreak after trying too hard to win the emperor’s favor.

Thinking back on her previous life, when she had worked herself to death, Li Wei gazed at the fresh-faced girl in the mirror and lamented: Working overtime at sixteen? What a calamity!

Right then and there, she wrote down her new life plan: Don’t compete for favor, don’t stand out, don’t pick sides. Her motto was simple: eat, sleep, and wait for retirement in peace.

So while the other consorts competed to outshine one another, she experimented with little hot pots. While they practiced their talents, she slacked off and napped in the imperial garden.

Then one night, the emperor, whom she had brushed off with her “office-worker neck rehabilitation exercises,” cornered her against a wall, his gaze complicated.

“Beloved consort, everyone else longs for my favor, but all you care about is whether my quilt is warm. Are you really foolish, or just pretending?”

About the heroine: I don’t want to write a naive sweetheart or a scheming woman. I just want to write a “genius” who has been beaten down by life and decides to use her wits (and shamelessness) to protect her comfortable existence. The logic behind all her outrageous schemes comes from the supreme philosophy of us working stiffs: “If I’m useless enough, no one can take advantage of me.” I hope readers can see in the heroine someone just like themselves, who doesn’t want to write weekly reports or attend another work meeting.

This story is for all of you who have been worn out by life’s endless rat race. I hope it brings you the purest, most effortless joy. If it can make you burst out laughing at your phone late at night after work, or on a morning when you don’t want to get out of bed, and think, “Ah, maybe things aren’t quite so exhausting after all,” then that will be my greatest success!