On the first day after transmigrating into the body of a concubine-born daughter of a marquis’s household, Shen Zhiyi was jolted awake by a bowl of hot tea splashed in her face.
People from the Prince Regent’s manor came to break off her engagement, claiming their birth charts were incompatible. The truth was that her family had backed the wrong side, and they wanted to cut ties. Her stepmother was waiting for her to cry. Everyone in the courtyard was waiting for her to die.
Shen Zhiyi didn’t cry. She pulled a sheet of paper from her sleeve and slapped it down in front of the Prince Regent.
“Wager Agreement”
“Your Highness, lend me one million taels. I’ll pay you back three million in a year. If I can’t...”
Xiao Yan raised eyes as dark and cold as frozen ink. “Then what?”
“I’ll marry you.”
He picked up his brush and signed at once, then added, “This prince will be waiting to collect your corpse.”
A year later, Shen Zhiyi slammed three million taels’ worth of silver notes onto the desk in the Prince Regent’s manor.
“The money’s repaid. We’re even.”
She turned and walked away, back straight, without looking back once.
Later, rumors swept the entire capital: the Prince Regent was squatting outside Shen’s Cloth Shop every day, holding a box of sesame cakes and waiting for two hours at a time.
Someone asked him, “Your Highness, why put yourself through this?”
Xiao Yan leaned against the doorframe, gazing at the figure inside as she worked her abacus. His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper scraping wood.
“I was wrong back then. I wasn’t waiting to collect a corpse.”
“I was waiting for her to look back at me.”
