The One and Only Darling Girl

[Redemption + pure love + devoted husband]

The girl was an orphan picked up by an opera troupe. She had no name and no past, only a voice her master had spent eighteen years honing.

Her master said, “Girl, opera is your life. Don’t think about anything else.”

Then she met Chong An.

The eldest son of the Chong family had returned from studying abroad, yet he kept showing up at the opera house.

“What’s your name?”

“…Girl.”

“That’s not a name.”

For the first time, those two words felt like they were burning her tongue.

When her master found out, he punished her by making her kneel in front of the stage all night. “Actors are at the bottom of society, but even those at the bottom have a right to live. Without opera, you’re nothing!”

Chong An kicked the door open and swept her into his arms. “She’s afraid of you, but I’m not. She’s a person, not some prop you can chain to the stage.”

He lifted her up. Behind them were her master’s furious curses, the opera troupe’s stunned silence, and the suddenly bitter moonlight of late autumn in Beiping.

In Republican-era romances, nine out of ten end in tragedy.

But Chong An said he would make theirs the one happy ending.