Only Her

Gu Ansui is the daughter of a low-ranking fifth-grade official. By luck, she gets into the Cui family academy. Her grades are mediocre, and she is quiet and awkward, like a glass of plain water among all the bright and vivacious young ladies and gentlemen.

But no one knows how bold she really is. She actually dares to use witchcraft on the Cui family's eldest son, who teaches her class.

She secretly buys a puppet from a wandering Taoist, picks up a strand of his hair, makes him drink water inscribed with a spell, and even drugs him unconscious to take blood from his fingertip. Her eyes are always fixed on him, watching him...

She tells herself over and over that if she can control him, she can get everything she wants.

From that day on, Gu Ansui takes endless pleasure in playing with her little doll. Her ordinary school days suddenly become much more fun. She no longer feels sleepy in the morning, stops getting distracted in class, and can even eat an extra bowl of rice at mealtimes.

Until her book box is knocked to the ground, and a puppet doll bearing Cui Zexing's name tumbles out.

Everyone else at the academy backs away, looking at her like a monster. They whisper about how a young woman who has not yet married could be so shameless as to desire the teacher who teaches them.

Gu Ansui trembles all over with panic, unable to defend herself. She crouches down to retrieve her things, then looks up and meets Cui Zexing's cold gaze.

...She's been found out.

*

Cui Zexing is a high-ranking official, refined, scholarly, and gentle. He has agreed to teach the younger members of his family.

But for some reason, he always feels that someone is watching him, like something sticky creeping up the back of his neck, wanting to strip him bare and see through him. Yet whenever he turns around, there's nothing there.

He even got rid of a group of political rivals because of it, but that gaze remained like a haunting spirit, watching him at every moment.

Until the day the book box belonging to the daughter of a low-ranking official was knocked over, and a doll bearing his name fell out... At last, he understood why things had felt strange lately.

Cui Zexing watches the little figure scramble to pick everything up, curled into a ball, too pathetic even to dare shed a tear.

His expression darkens, his knuckles tremble, and he touches a lock of a woman's black hair hidden deep against his chest.

1. SC. Yandere meets yandere, though unfortunately one of them is faking it.

2. The heroine uses a witchcraft doll to control the hero. She is gloomy and world-weary, so don't read if that's not your thing.

3. A purely historical romance. The heroine uses witchcraft and puppets to control the hero, but there are no fantasy elements.

Next up: The Resentful Husband

Blurb:

Ji Shen and Su Xuexing are celebrated throughout the capital as a perfect match.

He is a principled, upright scholar-official valued by the emperor. She is a renowned young female official at the Bureau of Astrology, able to predict celestial phenomena. They are a devoted couple, harmonious and seemingly perfect in every way.

Sometimes Ji Shen feels that something is amiss, then laughs at himself and chides himself for being suspicious.

Until his wife returns from Jiangnan with a man.

Gradually, he feels Xuexing changing, increasingly protective of that man. She calls him things like “hand-bro” and “soulmate.” The two of them are always saying things he cannot understand, chatting away as if no one else were there, even arguing with him over it.

But he cannot find any proof that Xuexing has fallen for someone else, so he can only watch her change with bitter resentment.

At last, one day, he stands outside a room and sees with his own eyes the two of them embracing and making plans to leave the capital.

Ji Shen restrains himself again and again. In the end, he doesn't barge in or give Xuexing a chance to ask for a divorce. Instead, he secretly sows discord and drives the man away.

Just as he is about to succeed, he sees Xuexing and the man disappear together in a flash of white light.

No sign of life, no corpse to be found.

Ji Shen waits and waits, until his hair turns white and his bones are buried in the earth, but Xuexing never returns.

But after dying, he opens his eyes again and finds himself back on the day his wife returned from Jiangnan with that **** ** man.

Theme: When one path ends, another opens