From the Start, I Knew the Prince Was a Hopeless Romantic

Wen Lan was an up-and-coming fashion designer in the twenty-eighth century. She died before her signature collection could be released, leaving behind a design she'd revised eighty times.

She was so furious when someone said, "Let's just go back to the first version," that she dropped dead. When she opened her eyes again, she saw a canopy bed decorated with Ming-style scrolling lotus patterns, and heard her maid, Xique, sobbing so hard her nose was running. She had become the Princess Consort of the Prince of Zhenbei, and the prince's secondary consort had just shoved her into a pond, nearly drowning her.

Before she could even process the fact that she'd transmigrated, Prince Shen Zhao galloped back from the palace.

He had all the standard traits of a historical romance hero: cold, taciturn, and decisive in battle.

But Shen Zhao crouched beside her bed, mud still on his boots, and held her hand. His first words weren't "Who did this to you?" but...

"Does it hurt?"

Wen Lan: ? This isn't how the script goes.

Later, she realized this prince didn't follow the script at all.

While other princes found the rivalry in their households irritating, he simply confined the secondary consort to her quarters. While other princes ruled with an iron fist at court, then came home and crouched beside their wives to watch them sketch clothes, he even volunteered to model them. While other princes took multiple wives and shared their affections among them, he sent back every beauty bestowed by the emperor, untouched, with the excuse, "One person at home is already enough to keep me busy."

Wen Lan thought something was off.

She secretly started keeping observation notes, intending to document this "abnormal specimen" of a Ming dynasty prince. But as she kept writing, she realized that she was the one being observed.

When she drew, he watched her hands. When she cut fabric, he watched her profile. When she frowned over an alteration, he smiled beside her.

Wen Lan finally couldn't help asking him, "What are you looking at?"

"My wife."