Springtime Drinks and Questions

[If I have time, I might write a short story. Updates will be sporadic. The whole thing is being rewritten, but that won't affect the usual new story I'll start after exams are over.]

◆ Upcoming stories: The Emperor's Brother, Traces in the Snow, The General Doesn't Want to Be Empress. Please add them to your reading list, and add the author's profile too! (Bats eyelashes furiously.)

◆ This story will be updated whenever I feel like it. A sweet little story written wherever inspiration takes me, in a style that's half novel and half essay.

Blurb:

The Shen family's daughter, Shen Ziji, was strikingly beautiful and gentle by nature. Once a celebrated young lady in the capital, she was betrothed by imperial decree to the Crown Prince.

Though her family fell from favor overnight, there was still no word that the engagement would be called off. Everyone envied Shen Ziji for finding a good match, and praised the Crown Prince for keeping his word.

She had always been gentle, easygoing, and unwilling to fight over anything. Yet just days after the wedding, scandalous rumors spread through the capital that the Crown Prince was carrying on with another woman.

Beautiful women are doomed to short lives. Shen Ziji's life was brief and full of misfortune, and she had only two regrets:

First, she hadn't been able to honor her father while he was alive.

Second, not even on her wedding day, or as she lay dying, had she been able to see the young marquis again. They had grown up together, but he had been stationed at the border for two whole years.

On the night she received the decree ordering her marriage, he suddenly came to see her. It was the first time they had parted on bad terms. Just a few days later, he resolutely requested a posting at the frontier.

...Who knows what he was angry about. Never mind. He probably just didn't want to see her.

*

When she awoke again, she was back on that spring day of apricot blossoms and light rain.

And the first thing she saw upon opening her eyes was the familiar scene of her green-tea younger sister trying to seduce her gorgeous childhood sweetheart.

...What should she do? Her fists were clenched. :D

Reborn into a second life, she no longer puts on the airs of a gentle, refined young lady. As for those familiar faces who had gone out of their way to kick her while she was down when she had been bedridden and near death...

Shen Ziji smiled faintly.

Sorry, I'm bad-tempered and I bite everyone I meet.

Lu, the White Lotus, pretends to fall in front of her: "Stop pretending, dear sister."

The Eastern Palace still wants her as the Crown Princess: "I'm not worthy of such an honor."

Miss Li provokes her again and again: "Mm-hmm, sure, sure, sure."

Her childhood friend Fang Yu lies beside her on his pillow and asks her to take responsibility for him: "...What's gotten into you?"

*

The year without Shen Ziji left Fang Yu alone, covered in falling snow.

He burned every letter Shen Ziji had never gotten the chance to read.

They say that way, all your wishes can reach you in your next life.

Reader's guide:

1. A sweet and slightly sour beauty x her gorgeous childhood friend, the heir to a noble title.

2. Exact warnings: mutual pining between two people who bottle everything up; the heroine was married in her previous life, while the hero remained chaste; readers who care about both leads being sexually inexperienced, proceed with caution. Only the author has never been in a relationship. The writing style is all over the place, half novel and half personal essay.

3. Entirely fictional setting, very loosely based on anything. Mountains of original worldbuilding.

[Cover art used with permission from Sumeng-Mingsu]

↓↓↓ Check out my upcoming stories too! TvT ↓↓↓

◆ A mind game about forbidden love with her imperial brother: The Emperor's Brother

The day her true identity was revealed, Chi Yu fell from grace and became a commoner overnight.

Passing off someone else's blood as royal was a crime punishable by death. If she wanted to live, she would have to take the place of the beloved princess and marry in her stead.

"A way out? What do you have to offer in exchange?" her former imperial brother asked with an amused smile.

She had nothing. What could she possibly offer him?

After a long silence, she lowered her eyes meekly, reached out with a trembling hand, and brushed her fingers over his palm.

In public, they played the part of devoted siblings. In private, they shared the most scandalous relationship in the world.

But no one knew she had never cared about being a princess. She had wanted to escape the palace and its towering walls for a long time.

And no one knew that her apparent obedience and surrender were just a ruse while she planned her escape from the capital.

*

Chi Nan was a prince who had risen from the most lowly position, step by step, and revealed his brilliance along the way.

When he ascended the throne, however, his harem was empty.

Everyone thought the new emperor was too busy with state affairs to care for romance. People said he was refined, noble, and unmatched in grace.

But once, this very emperor had kept a beloved concubine in his residence, a woman no one had ever seen.

"You're not my sister. You're my A Yu."

His voice had once turned hoarse as he lowered his head and kissed the corner of her lips.

No one knew that beneath his gentle facade, his devotion to her was almost maddening.

She was his imperial sister, and the woman in his heart.

*

When Chi Nan was at his lowest, she had saved him casually and never thought of it again. He, however, carried that memory in his heart for many years.

When she looked up at him with tear-damp eyes and reached out her hand, he wanted to take everything in the world that had wronged her and turn it into a phoenix coronet and wedding robes, then place the empress's throne beside them and give it all to her.

◆ A no-nonsense female general and a handsome crown prince who hides his identity share a night of passion: The General Doesn't Want to Be Empress

#When your junior fellow student turns out to be the emperor##The man beside me after I abandoned him was actually my beloved##I genuinely didn't want to become empress#

Chang Wan, daughter of the Defender of the Nation General, was born with stunning beauty, but had trained in martial arts with her father since childhood.

Other young ladies practiced music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, and dreamed of making a good marriage.

Chang Wan learned that blades had no eyes, and devoted herself to serving her ruler and protecting her country.

She couldn't stand the new junior fellow student. He wore a mask to act mysterious and put on a show of gentleness and good manners. Who was he trying to impress?

Her junior fellow student, for his part, had long wanted to complain that Chang Wan only knew how to wield weapons and had none of the qualities of a proper young lady. Who would ever marry her?

Then, one fateful time, they gave in to passion, and rain fell on the spring blossoms.

But Chang Wan couldn't even be bothered to look at his face when he first took off his mask. She simply turned and left.

When her junior fellow student asked for her hand in marriage, Chang Wan rejected him outright:

"This isn't your fault. There has never been anything between us. Even if the man standing before me today were the Crown Prince himself, promising to make me empress someday, it still wouldn't happen if I didn't want it."

No one knew there was someone in Chang Wan's heart she couldn't forget.

*

The realm was at peace, and the new emperor ascended the throne. Chang Wan entered the palace to meet him, honored for her military service, but the emperor summoned her to his chambers alone.

From behind layers of curtains and beaded screens emerged a man of breathtaking beauty.

And yet he had exactly the same face as the one she held dear in her heart?

The man of peerless beauty came up to Chang Wan and asked with a smile:

"Would you be willing to become my empress, Senior Sister?"

"...?"

*

Shen Hua proposed to his senior sister Chang Wan three times in his life.

The first time, facing her junior fellow student after their intimacy, Chang Wan told him: The world is vast. There's no need.

The second time, sitting atop the city wall with a wine cup in hand, Chang Wan told him: The nation comes first. Love can wait.

The third time, she finally blushed, and clumsily took his hand with the same hands that had only ever held weapons. Chang Wan told him: Yes.

He was a prince high above everyone else, and he spent his whole life making Chang Wan his empress.

But he was her captive.

◆ Old-school melodrama: a female assassin reunites with the stand-in for the man she loves (?): Traces in the Snow

Shen Changyue had a face that could bring kingdoms to ruin, yet she was once a moon so bright that no one could reach her.

Through a twist of fate, she was saved by Wei Zhi in her youth, and from then on, she loved him with unwavering devotion.

Everyone knew she was Wei Zhi's woman, but no one knew she was his finest weapon, and that she had stained both hands with blood for his sake.

One day, she walked across the snowy plains with her sword sheathed and an umbrella in hand. In the snow, she found a boy on the brink of death, covered in blood, whose face was nine-tenths identical to the man she loved.

It was the only time she ever felt compassion, and the first time she lied to Wei Zhi.

She let the boy escape from beneath her sword.

It was because he had a face like that. Just this once, she thought. Just this once. The farther he went, the better.

*

Three years later, Wei Zhi became king and took a new queen.

It turned out even the love they had shared was false. Because of her beauty, Shen Changyue was imprisoned in the harem and became a plaything he could humiliate at will.

With nowhere left to turn, there was no place in the world that would take her in.

Only the boy from all those years ago carried her, covered in blood, through endless snow.

She was the king's consort. He was a rebel.

*

If this world had nowhere to shelter her, then he would wield his sword and carve out a place for them with his own hands.

◆ There are more beautiful upcoming stories in my author profile. Please add them too! 0v0

Theme: Finding each other amid loss and missed chances.