After Capturing the Stand-In

Shen Jingying's life had been planned out.

Born into a distinguished family as its legitimate daughter, she had known Prince Chu in the past. Now she served as his strategist, waiting for his victory. Then she would kneel and submit, behaving with sweet humility as she sought a hundred years of wealth and security from him.

Things went awry at the Anxi Protectorate, where Shen Jingying went on Prince Chu's behalf to find a stand-in. There she met Poli, who was nothing like the dignified, proper people she had known in her first seventeen years.

The young man was carefree, passionate, bold, and free-spirited. He showed her the desert's sandstorms and the full moon in the vast sky. When the mood struck him, he would take a western instrument, sit on a dune, and play and sing for her. He also told her she needn't be constrained by her family, that she had countless choices.

Once, beneath the moon, he gently pressed his forehead against hers. His eyes reflected nothing but her. "I know nothing of Prince Chu's strategist. I only know you as Shen Jingying."

And so Shen Jingying began planning how to run away with Poli once everything was settled.

But she never expected that when the veils of dust and fog from the past were swept aside, this lowborn stand-in would turn out to be a noble of the imperial clan, a lost pearl of the sea. And the choice Poli offered her in the end left her caught in a dilemma.

He pointed toward Prince Chu, whose face was identical to his, and asked her:

"Will you choose him, or me?"

One-on-one romance, with perhaps a tiny bit of a love triangle later on. An alternate-history setting, written for personal enjoyment and preference. No political scheming.

A carefree, passionate, devoted desert rose x a cool, reserved, tough girl

Theme: Face your true self