My Elder Princess Sister Is Actually My Moonlight

New column novel, "Stealing Jade in Springtime". Please add it to your reading list~

Ami grew up among ordinary people. Then, in a single day, she rose from obscurity to become the Emperor's legitimate Princess Yongjia, who had been lost to the palace for many years.

The day she was welcomed into the Golden Hall, every minister knelt before her. Even the princes and princesses had no choice but to bow their heads deferentially.

Yet only Ami knew that passing herself off as a member of the imperial family was a capital crime of deceiving the Emperor!

Her hands trembled faintly inside her long sleeves. The Emperor was advanced in age and gravely ill, so it was only a matter of time before a new emperor took the throne.

Her gaze swept over the many princes. The eldest was cruel by nature, the second was frail and ineffectual, and only the third was clever and capable...

Before she could think it through, that handsome face turned toward her, too.

Ami thought, I'll choose him.

Shen Jian's face was as gentle as fine jade. He looked back at the radiant, beautiful woman in the great hall and raised an eyebrow. So it was her...

From then on, the guards often came to report:

"Princess Yongjia has repeatedly put in a good word for Your Highness before His Majesty."

"Princess Yongjia sent Your Highness some pastries she made herself."

"Princess Yongjia..."

Shen Jian accepted it all without reservation.

That is, until the ministers discovered that Ami had faked her background and demanded that Shen Jian punish her according to the law.

That night, Shen Jian summoned Ami to the palace.

Tears clung to the corners of her eyes as she cautiously clutched the hem of Shen Jian's robe. Now that he was Emperor, she felt both guilty and frightened, afraid he would punish her for her crime.

But Shen Jian smiled as he gently wiped away her tears, one by one. "What are you afraid of? Aren't you always using me, Sister? Why are you afraid now?"

Ami looked up and saw the letters between herself and her real brother displayed boldly on the desk before him...

Ami: Ah, y-you knew all along?

Shen Jian: What else did you expect?

The best hunters often appear as prey.

Note:

An imaginary setting, one-on-one romance. The male and female leads are not related by blood.

Blurb for the new novel "Stealing Jade in Springtime":

Jiang Wanwan is the illegitimate daughter of a concubine, born to serve as a foil to her legitimate older sister.

On the day her sister was betrothed, the whole household celebrated. Jiang Wanwan, meanwhile, was treated like an insignificant object and sent to the bed of a bureaucrat in his sixties.

Her mother told her to endure it, for the sake of the Jiang family's future.

Jiang Wanwan refused to accept that fate.

Wei Yixu, heir to the Anyuan Marquisate, was the lifeline she had managed to grasp after much effort.

Even though he was the very man her sister had just become engaged to... Jiang Wanwan would take her place and make her sister pay for the contempt and humiliation she had inflicted on her.

But who knew Wei Yixu was not what he seemed? Beneath that refined exterior was a ruthless, cold-hearted man.

-

When Wei Yixu learned that everything Jiang Wanwan had done was meant to take revenge on the Jiang family, that her tenderness and affection had all been false, and that she had only humored him before casting him aside like a worthless object, he stared at her with a cold laugh and forced out several emphatic "Fine"s.

Not long afterward, beneath a gauze canopy lit by flickering candlelight, Wei Yixu trapped her frail body between his arms and ordered her, head bowed, "You can't abandon me. I promised you we'd be together forever."

He knew it was all a fantasy, a fleeting illusion, yet he insisted on grasping at it.

Jiang Wanwan knew he was mad, and avoided him all the more, as if he were a venomous snake.

"I want you to speak gently to me and obey me just as you did before. Don't ever think of avoiding me or betraying me again."

"That day will never come."

Defiant illegitimate daughter vs. a dog of a man who is refined on the surface and dark inside

Happy ending, fake death trope, a melodramatic jumble

Theme: I determine my own fate