The Imperial Scion's Neighboring Childhood Sweetheart

Under the big tree where the villagers gathered to cool off, Qi Jiao sucked on half a sugar figurine and bragged, “My father says my ancestors were renowned scholars across the land!”

Lu Hanyi sat on a low stool, sucking on the other half of the sugar figurine as he mended a patch on his sleeve. He laughed. “Then my ancestors must have been wealthy people from the capital.”

Qi Jiao propped her chin on one hand and rolled her eyes. “A wealthy family so poor they need the neighbors to buy them sugar figurines, and whose clothes are all patched up.”

Lu Hanyi finished sewing the narrow sleeve of her outer robe, which she had torn. Unhurriedly, he tossed it back to her. “A family of scholars who don’t know a single idiom or allusion and can only brag.”

That year, the injustice of the Eastern Palace case was finally overturned. An emissary from the capital came all the way to the village and knelt at the Lu family’s door, welcoming back the imperial prince who had been living among commoners.

That same month, a carriage from one of the capital’s great families stopped at the village entrance to take home a collateral relative of the Qi family, who had secretly cared for the imperial grandson for years.

On the day Qi Jiao went to the main Qi family residence in the capital to reclaim her ancestry, she stepped into a grand estate filled with pavilions and towers. Her beautiful, dark almond-shaped eyes went round. Good heavens! Her ancestors really were a scholarly family with a century of history!

She had grown up in the countryside and could barely get through a sentence with an idiom or allusion. H-help...

Outside the solemn palace halls, with their sweeping roof brackets and eaves, Lu Hanyi pressed his lips together.

He straightened his neat plain robes and calmly stepped through the vermilion palace gates studded with gilded copper, as the Crown Prince’s eldest son and legitimate imperial grandson.

A few days later, a brief message from the palace was delivered to the Qi family’s newly acknowledged Fifth Young Lady:

“Jiaojiao, don’t be afraid. Stay peacefully at the Qi residence. I’ll take care of everything in the capital.”

At the same time as she received the message, Fifth Young Lady Qi Jiao was coaxing and cajoling her newly acknowledged Qi brothers, trying every trick she knew to get a message sent to the palace:

“Old Lu, don’t be afraid. Stay peacefully in the palace. I’ve won over the Qi family matriarch. What do you need in the palace? I’ll get it for you.”

First draft written on June 3, 2022.

Theme: Fear no storms or setbacks.