The Kindest Second Young Lady in All of Chang'an

The day Second Miss Pei was brought back to the Prime Minister's residence by the Pei family was the autumn equinox, when withered grass stretched as far as the eye could see.

In the back garden, a curious onlooker asked what the Crown Prince thought of his “cousin” who had been living among commoners.

At the time, the Crown Prince, a man of exalted status, was sitting beside the lotus pond, its blooms long since faded. He ground the dead grass at his feet beneath his shoe and said carelessly, “Do you know what difference there is between the grass outside the Prime Minister's residence and the grass inside it?”

Everyone was baffled and could not come up with an answer. Only Pei Yuan, standing beneath the covered corridor, understood.

The Crown Prince was mocking her, saying that even though she had been brought back to the Prime Minister's residence, she would never be fit for high society. She would be nothing but an insignificant blade of grass her whole life.

Eleven-year-old Pei Yuan lowered her eyes to her own pair of painfully thin hands and thought that the damn Crown Prince was not entirely wrong.

-

Five years later, Chang'an was rocked by a sudden upheaval.

In the wilderness a thousand li away, Pei Yuan sat in a tree and looked down at the Crown Prince, who lay beneath it, on the verge of death. She tapped the tree trunk beside her with the hilt of her knife and asked with a beaming smile, “Your Highness, do you know what difference there is between the trees outside the palace and the trees inside it?”

The young Crown Prince's face darkened, but he said nothing.

The celebrated Second Miss Pei, whose beauty outshone all others in Chang'an, gave a gentle little “tsk” and said, “The trees outside the palace tower proudly toward the sky and fear no wind or rain. How could they compare to the fragile trees inside the palace? ‘Cousin,’ don't you agree?”

-

Everyone in Chang'an said that Pei Yuan, the Prime Minister's second daughter, was the kindest young woman in the city.

No one knew just how two-faced, ruthless, and vindictive she was... except Li Jin.

Li Jin: ...I shouldn't have called her grass back then!

-

Before coming to Chang'an, Pei Yuan wasn't called Pei Yuan. She was called Yu Wan.

In the twenty-eighth year of the Qianchang era, the sallow, gaunt Yu Wan lifted the carriage curtain as she passed through the city gates. Looking at the brilliant sunshine above Chang'an, she slowly smiled.

Since you insist on making me come back, then let's all go to hell together!

P.S. [This will probably be an ancient-style romance with a bit of slapstick. There will still be political intrigue, though the romance should take up more of the story. The male lead's name was picked on the spot by an author who is terrible at naming characters, so it might change.]

Blurb written on 2022/09/20

Theme: I'll think about it some more