An Imperfect Fairy Tale

[Mutual crush, reunion after years apart, school life followed by city life, happy ending]

This novel has undergone multiple major revisions. Pirated versions are incomplete, so please support the official release! Coming soon: the modern romance "A Guilty Conscience," a double-substitute romance, and the historical romance "The Moon Shines on Us," a story about an obscure Northern Song emperor and empress, featuring a memorization squad. The full manuscript is complete, and the blurbs are at the end. I'm throwing a tantrum and begging you to add them to your favorites!!

[Blurb]

When people think of Jiang Yuwei and Cheng Yu in high school, the only connection that comes to mind is probably their names right next to each other on the class rankings: their scores neck and neck, trading first place.

A gifted small-town test-taking machine, a heaven's favorite with a halo, evenly matched rivals, high school classmates who only nodded in passing. Nothing more.

No one knew that Jiang Yuwei had actually had a crush on Cheng Yu for years.

What is life like without a protagonist's halo? Growing up in a poor family, unable to have the things you like, forced to become a sensible child from a young age. Growing up through years of school bullying, isolated and helpless, just because she was prettier and smarter than the others. Being pushed forward by the rejection of those around her, the cruelty of children, and the hypocrisy of adults.

There are no delightful surprises falling from the sky, only sudden upheavals.

That was the first half of Jiang Yuwei's life.

How hard must you work to break free from the shackles of fate? Jiang Yuwei, anxious about poverty and eager for wealth, only saw a different light in her striving life after meeting Cheng Yu, someone completely unlike her, someone enveloped in a protagonist's halo.

But a supporting character's fate is always full of twists and turns, never going the way they wish.

Years later, Jiang Yuwei runs into Cheng Yu again while representing her company in business negotiations. So much time has passed that she thinks she's long since stopped loving him. She tells herself she's moved on, but the love buried in her heart bursts into flame again in that instant.

At last, the person without a protagonist's halo accepts that she's destined to be ordinary. After all their twists and turns, the protagonist wants love most of all, while the supporting character most wants to break free from the constraints of her past and find freedom.

The wind that blew when she was seventeen finally settles on Jiang Yuwei at twenty-seven.

Extra scene:

Before the college entrance exam, Cheng Yu receives an anonymous gift: a beautifully wrapped white rose and a card that reads, "Fate brought us together. I shall say no more."

Later, the rose withers. The card is tucked inside a book by Natsume Soseki and travels with him from place to place.

Cheng Yu always thought Jiang Yuwei hated him. Years later, he learns that she sent him the white rose on the eve of the college entrance exam, and that its meaning was, "I am worthy of you."

Stubborn, sensitive top student × sunny, bright darling of heaven

Reader's guide: 1. School life and workplace. No romance before adulthood.

2. Mutual crush, one-on-one romance, happy ending.

3. Two top students, studying hard and living earnestly, no melodramatic angst.

Blurb for "A Guilty Conscience":

Double-substitute romance | Sharp-tongued, scheming female doctor × straightforward, wolf-like male celebrity

The first time Chen Song saw Qiao Yiting was at the hospital. His gaze swept over the crowded people in the corridor and landed on her at once.

"Hello, I'm your attending physician, Qiao Yiting."

Qiao Yiting looked very much like someone.

Chen Song felt bewitched. He knew Qiao Yiting wasn't her, but he couldn't help looking at her, seeing another person through that face.

Chen Song was an actor, and he was adept at acting in love with complete strangers. Flowers and gifts, tender concern, romantic surprises, vows of eternal love: it all came naturally, and he successfully won Qiao Yiting's heart.

Qiao Yiting was a promising young doctor with a medical doctorate, the youngest attending physician at the hospital. Chen Song, meanwhile, was just an unknown actor. Sometimes he felt pathetic, thinking that only his unwillingness to accept things had made their otherwise unrelated lives intersect.

They dated like an ordinary couple: holding hands, hugging, kissing. But whenever passion overwhelmed them, Chen Song would look at that familiar face and become dazed, losing all sense of time and place.

On Qiao Yiting's birthday, Chen Song arrived at her home early to surprise her, but accidentally knocked over a picture frame on the table. Two photos fell from the broken frame. Behind the photo of him and Qiao Yiting was a slightly yellowed picture of Qiao Yiting smiling happily, with a young man beside her who wasn't him.

It turned out that those who deceived others would eventually be deceived themselves.

"So you got together with me because I look like your ex-boyfriend?"

Qiao Yiting met Chen Song's accusation with an expressionless face and scooped up a bite of cake. "You know the answer."

Chen Song gripped her wrist and said bitterly, "That's not fair to me!"

"Not fair?" Qiao Yiting looked up, a trace of mockery in her eyes. "Chen Song, didn't you get together with me because I look like your ex-girlfriend? This is perfectly fair!"

She laid her bait with ulterior motives, and he took it with ulterior motives of his own.

Blurb for the upcoming novel "The Moon Shines on Us":

Zhao Xu remembers first meeting Liu Wanyue in the autumn of the fifth year of Yuanfeng.

The rain had just stopped and the sun had come out. A little girl in a red top and green skirt stood beneath a tree and smiled at him, as radiant as a crabapple blossom. They hit it off at once: the granddaughter of a famous minister and the son of the emperor, a match made in heaven. Sadly, their fate together allowed them to be friends for only one month.

His father said that when he grew up, he would bring her back to the palace to be his wife. But before Zhao Xu had time to grow up, his father passed away, and he was forced onto the throne. He became emperor, but not the master of the realm.

He could only watch as his grandmother destroyed all of his father's life's work and rewrote his father's achievements, powerless to stop her. Blood ties meant nothing in the face of power, just as his grandmother hoped he would never grow up, while he hoped she would soon meet her end.

That year, he met her again among a crowd of palace attendants. She had changed her name and identity, and wore the pale blue-green clothes of an ordinary palace servant. Kneeling respectfully before him, her expression was indifferent, as cool and distant as the moon.

From the age of twelve or thirteen, the two words Liu Wanyue heard palace attendants use about her, both openly and behind her back, were "seductress."

Among all the imperial attendants, she was undoubtedly the most outstanding. She was beautiful, could sing and dance, was clever and quick-witted, and knew how to get along with people. And yet she was illiterate, of low birth, beautiful but unlearned: the very picture of a born seductress.

Sometimes she wished she really were what they said: an empty-headed woman who thought only of seducing the emperor. At least then, she could live a much easier life.

But she wasn't that kind of person. She had read many books, traveled many roads, seen the vast world and the deceitfulness of human hearts. Once, all she wanted was to roam freely beneath the heavens. In the end, for the sake of revenge, she could only confine her whole life within the palace walls.

It was as if fate had cut her life in two. Before the age of ten, she was a refined young lady from a distinguished family, fearless in everything, bold and brilliant, too young to know sorrow. After ten, her closest family died with regrets, her family declined, and she changed her name and identity, hiding her talents in the palace as she experienced every sorrow life had to offer.

The palace attendants all thought that becoming a favored consort was good enough. But Liu Wanyue was different. If she was going to fight, she wanted the position of empress, Zhao Xu's undivided love, and supreme power.

What she wanted, she was determined to hold firmly in her hands.

Premise: Strive forward and work hard to improve yourself.