I'm Really Not His Majesty's Ex-Girlfriend

[Upcoming: Little Kitchen at an Oilfield in the Gobi Desert [The 1960s]. Please add it to your collection. Blurb at the very bottom.]

Blurb for this novel:

Su Shu had just transmigrated when she found herself kneeling before her ex-boyfriend. More precisely, she was kneeling before Qin Lin, now the emperor of Great Zhao.

Five years ago, she had broken up with him and walked away. After transmigrating, she had become one of his subjects.

He sat upon the dragon throne, worshipped by thousands.

And she had been given a marriage decree by the late emperor and was about to marry the Prince of Zhenbei.

Su Shu decided to stay far away from this dangerous ex.

So she pretended to have amnesia, pretended they were strangers, and pretended to be respectful.

But the man she had once abandoned kept closing in on her, step by step.

"Su Shu, do you really not remember me, or are you just unwilling to acknowledge me?"

She wanted to escape the capital, so he kept her by his side.

She wanted to marry someone else, so he postponed that marriage again and again.

Su Shu finally couldn't take it anymore. "Your Majesty, why do you keep pestering me?!"

Qin Lin looked at her and replied calmly, "Because you owe me an explanation."

Reader's Guide:

1. Both leads transmigrated; a broken relationship rekindled.

2. 1v1, both leads are pure.

3. An imaginary setting with many original details. Please don't scrutinize it.

---Blurb for Little Kitchen at an Oilfield in the Gobi Desert [The 1960s]---

Zhu Qiao transmigrated into the body of a young woman sent to support the border regions. She was assigned to the great northwest of the country and became a cook at a residential compound in an oilfield district.

A residential compound consisted of several rows of dugouts on the Gobi Desert. The canteen where she worked was a temporary kitchen with wind blowing in from every side. Conditions had once been so harsh that meals consisted of nothing but boiled dough slices in clear water or potato mush. During the winter, when fresh vegetables ran out, they could go days without seeing a single bit of green.

Others worried at the endless Gobi Desert, but Zhu Qiao didn't think it was nearly as barren as they said.

She had grown up here in her previous life, running between the grazing lands and the Gobi with her family from childhood. After transmigrating, she dared to walk the paths others were afraid to take. In places that looked utterly lifeless to everyone else, she could bring back a basketful of ingredients from the gullies and dips in the earth: wild greens from the river flats, mushrooms from the sandy ground, wood ear mushrooms from dead trees after the rain, and wild fruits ripened in autumn...

Zhu Qiao thought: Since I'm here already, what a waste it would be not to find out what this place has to offer.

So whenever the transport team brought in supplies, Zhu Qiao would come up with new ways to improve the meals. One day, she would toss desert greens with wild chicken eggs and make a pot of steaming buns. The next, she would fry sand scallions in a wok and cook a pot of fragrant wild mushroom rice soup. The day after that, she would braise carrots, onions, and raisins into glossy pilaf. A few days later, the table would feature laghman noodles topped with kohlrabi and wood ear mushrooms.

Gradually, the thing everyone at the compound looked forward to most each day became: What's cooking in the little kitchen today?

Later, a young work-team captain named Shao Zheng arrived at the compound.

He spent most of the year working in the field. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was cold-faced and sparing with words.

The first time he came to eat at the little kitchen, everyone else praised the delicious food. He said nothing, just polished off a full bowl of rice, then gave Zhu Qiao another look before leaving.

After that, wild game would mysteriously appear in the little kitchen from time to time.

Zhu Qiao asked around, but no one admitted to leaving it. Unconvinced, she hid in the little kitchen one night to keep watch.

Sure enough, late that night, the curtain at the door shifted. Shao Zheng came in carrying two cleaned rabbits. He had just bent to set them down when someone behind the stove asked, "Captain Shao, what are you doing?"

Shao Zheng paused and turned around.

Moonlight streamed in through the doorway, and his gaze met Zhu Qiao's bright, shining eyes.

He looked at her for a long while before saying, "I found these rabbits on the road. They're for you."

Theme: Love means respecting each other's choices.