Disarray

Everyone in Huai'an says the Su family has taken in a mad young lady.

The legitimate daughter of a scholarly family should have been a perfect match for the second young master of the prestigious merchant Su family. They were childhood sweethearts, a match made in heaven.

Jiahe and Jiayun: even their names were a perfect fit.

But after the wedding, Miss Shen acted as if she were possessed. On their wedding night, she refused to let Second Young Master Shen touch her, and even secretly brought home a woman from a pleasure house.

What good could come of mixing with a woman like that? Bad company corrupts. Spend long enough with someone like her, and even a white pearl will turn into a fish's foul, cloudy eye.

Before long, that pleasure-house woman was involved with Miss Shen. What a pair of ungrateful wretches! In the end, she even ran away with Miss Su. For all that Miss Su came from a scholarly family, she couldn't tell right from wrong. Poor Second Young Master Shen, saddled with a pair of madwomen and left with a bad name.

“Poor thing. What was the pleasure-house woman's name?”

“Let me think... I believe it was Qing He. In any case, she wasn't a respectable woman.”

Before she came of age, Shen Jiahe had always been the ideal Huai'an woman in everyone's eyes: well-read, skilled at needlework, virtuous, and proper.

At first, Shen Jiahe thought so too. From the moment she was old enough to understand, she seemed to know what her future held: learn virtue and literature, marry, and have children. Just like every other woman in Huai'an.

She could have accepted that future, but then she met someone who made her unwilling to settle for it.

That person was a lotus rising from the mud. Though her feet were bound, she still swayed with grace. She seemed ready to break free at any moment and fly away with the wind, clean and free.

Shen Jiahe suddenly realized that the life she had always thought happy had made her no more than a bird in a cage. Though the cage was beautiful and safe, she could never escape it.

What does it feel like to fall from the clouds into the mire? Probably nothing much. One moment you're a young lady of a respectable family, and the next you're selling smiles in a brothel.

As long as you can stay alive, even scraping by is fine.

Unfortunately, when Qing He was at her lowest, she met the purest person of all.

Someone who blushed when she secretly watched her dance. A quiet, elegant, scholarly young woman in everyone's eyes. A daughter of the Shen family, and the person she used to be.

At last, Qing He understood what it meant to feel unworthy: to be dressed in filth and resigned to a sullied life, yet still long to touch someone whose purity seemed far beyond her reach.

Content warnings:

Not a pure relationship on both sides; not a wish-fulfillment story; set in an alternate world.

A scholarly young lady bound by Confucian propriety × a destitute courtesan whose family was destroyed; they save each other.

No clear-cut top/bottom roles. I haven't been involved in the yuri-fiction community; I simply wanted to write this story.

This story came from a sudden idea. If it offends anyone, please don't hold it against any community.

Theme: When love and freedom go against convention, everything you do will be considered wrong.