When Li Zhaoyang was twelve, she fell from a locust tree, and a bloodied little girl caught her.
She gave the girl a hair tie and said, "Be mine. I'll protect you."
The little girl said, "All right. I'll wait for you."
Then she woke up. Her mother told her, "You will forget."
And she really did.
Ten years later, General Xiao Zhao, the Defender of the North, returned to the capital. He was stern and taciturn, with a scar on his left cheek. A worn gray-white hair tie circled his wrist, nearly broken, and he never took it off.
Fourth Princess Li Zhaoyang looked at the hair tie and felt a tightness in her chest. She couldn't explain why.
She thought Xiao Zhao was a useful weapon.
She thought using her, guarding against her, and investigating her background were all things an emperor ought to do.
She didn't know she was the one who had given him that hair tie.
She didn't know Xiao Zhao had waited ten years for her to remember.
She knew even less that, before her mother died, she had made Li Zhaoyang forget it all so she could ascend the throne free and unencumbered, without anyone holding her back.
But she was held back all the same.
As the layers of truth were peeled away, and the prescriptions hidden in the hair tie, the blood letter at the bottom of the coffin, and the old accounts from the northern frontier all came to light, she finally remembered everything.
Xiao Zhao only said, "The tie's worn out. It's time for a new one."
She wouldn't replace it.
This is a story about forgetting and waiting.
About someone who forgot what she had said, and someone who remembered it for ten years.
About someone who climbed upward, and someone who held her up from below.
"Be mine."
"All right. I'll wait for you."
Ten years have passed.
At last, she has come.
[Faithful Puppy General x Courageous, Resourceful, Ambitious Princess]
[GL Power Struggles, Chasing the Wife to the Crematorium, Happy Ending]
Theme: True loyalty is never blind obedience. It is the clear-eyed willingness to give yourself even when you know you are being used. And the deepest form of love is to forget the whole world, yet remember the promise you made to one person.
Okay, I will update two articles at once. You should have seen my comments. Okay, okay.
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