Thoughts of Spring

Up next, available for preorder: I Really Did Play All Their White Moonlights. Please add it to your reading list!

Blurb

[Spacey, sweet little softie VS gentle, refined older man]

[A cozy, everyday life-and-growing-up story]

In the eighteenth year of Changli, Zhe Jiaoyu was three years old. The northern lands had been invaded, and the people fled south.

In the chaos, she became separated from her general father, lost her voice, and was sold by human traffickers into the Prince of Shu's residence.

She grew up there until she was six, then was assigned to tend the flower garden.

The sixteen-year-old Prince of Shu loved flowers. One day, he was reclining beneath a covered walkway, reading, while she busied herself in the courtyard, collecting flowers in a little basket woven from wisteria.

He happened to see her and bestowed a name upon her. "Let's call you A Luo."

From then on, he kept her by his side and carefully taught her.

She grew up there until she was sixteen, when she caught a chill and died, bringing her uneventful life to an end.

The only remarkable thing was what he suddenly said just before she died: "A Luo, I love you, not as a friend, but as a man loves a woman, as a husband loves his wife."

When Zhe Jiaoyu opened her eyes again, she had returned to the time before she was separated from her general father.

She was surrounded by beautiful, luxurious furnishings, and now she was the one in charge, no longer a servant who tended flowers.

It was as though her past life had been a fleeting dream, nothing but an illusion.

Who would choose to be a servant when they could be the master?

She forgot the Prince of Shu and happily lived her own good life.

Only sometimes, she wondered how a man like him could ever have fallen for her.

When she was six, she followed her mother to the imperial capital and saw the Prince of Shu again.

Her mischievous older brother had taken her boating at home to gather lotus pods. As soon as their boat reached the shore, she lifted her head from beneath the enormous lotus leaf above her and saw him standing there.

He lowered his head and asked gently, "What's your name?"

Zhe Jiaoyu stared at him and murmured, "A Luo."

Qi Guannan had been dreaming a lot lately. In his dreams, he wasn't the gentle and refined man he was now, but a madman who killed without blinking.

The only person he ever treated gently was A Luo, the girl who tended his flowers.

Qi Guannan, the gentleman: "..."

Content warnings:

A cozy everyday-life story set beneath the power of warlord-era magnates, like wine brewed with pine flowers and tea steeped in spring water.

The male lead is ten years older than the female lead. A pampering, healing story.

For the record, the male lead will not develop romantic feelings for the female lead before she is sixteen, and she will not date before she is sixteen.

Preorder blurb: I Really Did Play All Their White Moonlights

Lan Qingchan was a little-known actress. She worked hard day and night, and in her first year after debuting, she landed supporting roles in four melodramatic costume dramas for the web.

She was so lucky, and all she had to do was wait for them to air and make her famous!

But before they could air, she transmigrated to ancient times and became a country scholar with a terrible reputation who disguised herself as a man to take the imperial examinations.

She thought she'd been handed a story about transmigrating to take the exams and rise to success, but gradually she realized something was wrong.

How had the worlds of all four melodramas merged together?!

The deposed crown prince, Feng Xingyan, had lived a lonely life, hated the world, and teetered on the edge of madness. Yet in his heart, he cherished a palace maid who had once served him in the Cold Palace.

Song Jingming was a self-disciplined, courteous gentleman praised by everyone, but nobody knew that every night in his dreams, he made passionate love to his widowed sister-in-law.

The treacherous minister Yu Heng had a childhood sweetheart when he was young. They supported each other through everything, but he devoted himself to power and neglected his wife after their marriage, allowing misunderstandings between them to deepen.

The domineering young marquis Jing Zhiwei, whose parents had both died, had an older sister who once took him by the hand and guided him through every season, the two of them relying on each other to survive.

In the end, every one of these women died in the prime of her life, becoming the white moonlight in the heart of the man who loved her.

In the year since Lan Qingchan arrived, the men were all still consumed by the pain of losing her. Without even discussing it, they each set out to find a replacement.

And then they all fixed their eyes on her.

You look just like my palace maid/widowed sister-in-law/childhood sweetheart/older sister.

Shh, don't say a word. Just be my replacement.

Lan Qingchan: "..."

Heh. Hehehe.

"She" was a man now! How could this get any more outrageous?

#I really did play all their white moonlights, but I can't handle all four at once#

#Help! How do I face my childhood sweetheart husband after being entangled with a mad crown prince?#

#Those few episodes I acted in turned out to be the actual lives they lived.#

Tone: lighthearted comedy, with the plot taking priority over logic.

The male lead has not been decided yet. The female lead's main goal is to turn the tables.

The male leads' personalities may change as I develop the outline.

Theme: No matter where you find yourself, keep fighting to live.