My Childhood Friend Has Designs on Me

(Updated when I feel like it. On hiatus for now.)

[Unwitting flirt who seems dark but is really innocent (shou) x elegant, two-faced, wicked woman (gong)]

Amnesia / winning back the wife / unrequited love / two heroines / mostly sweet / unrequited love becomes mutual

[Updates at 11 p.m. when there's a ranking event]

Also known as "Childhood Sweethearts"

As the Chancellor's own daughter, Hua Zui has been doted on since childhood.

She rides through the streets, watches performances, teases cats and walks dogs. Even the ants in Qinyang City make way for her.

But to everyone's astonishment, this little menace who does whatever she pleases falls from a pavilion at eighteen, loses her memory, and becomes so well-behaved that she goes to the academy to study?

Everyone: A great blessing for Qinyang City.

.

Having forgotten three years' worth of reading and writing, Hua Zui has no choice but to return to the academy and start over.

The academy is called Zishan. Students are divided between the Qian and Ming halls according to ability: the capable go to Qian, and the rest to Ming.

One day, Hua Zui, who is in the Ming Hall, meets a classmate three years her senior named Shao En.

Before Wen Shaoen arrives, Hua Zui hears that the woman is stunningly beautiful but cold, aloof, and very difficult to approach.

When a young noblewoman sends her a love poem, the woman simply says, "I am not a suitable match," then calmly turns away and picks up her book again.

A girl who had worked up the courage to confess stares at the woman's striking profile and falls into thought.

So cold. I like her even more.

.

In the academy, countless people want to pluck this flower from the mountaintop, this snow in the hills.

Hua Zui isn't even interested in looking at her.

What's so great about a cold bookworm?

She'd rather spend time with her childhood friend, who traveled with her all the way to Cang River and protected her with her life despite not knowing martial arts.

Beautiful, considerate, gentle, and refined.

Compared with this legendary cold beauty, she's on another level entirely.

Remembering how her childhood friend had been unwilling, yet still fed her medicine mouth-to-mouth that day, and how their passionate kiss brought back her memories...

Hua Zui blushes.

She's so wonderful, so considerate.

But when the cold beauty comes to the academy and becomes Hua Zui's deskmate, Hua Zui realizes that she's the very same childhood friend.

The Shao En mentioned by their teacher is just her courtesy name.

.

One day, spring colors fill the academy garden.

Pinned beneath a tree by Wen Chenzhi, Hua Zui gasps for breath.

She pushes away the woman who keeps trying to kiss her without warning, nearly in tears.

"Wen Shaoen! You're awful!"

Weren't they friends?

I thought of you as a sister, and you actually want to...?

Wen Chenzhi smiles, her scarlet lips tenderly brushing Hua Zui's earlobe.

Her grip is strong, leaving a red mark around the young woman's wrist and keeping her from pulling away.

Hua Zui grits her teeth and kicks the woman.

Didn't you say you couldn't fight?

Liar.

The woman's voice is low at her ear, dangerous and wicked with tangled affection, nothing like her former gentle self. "A-Zui, why did you drink that day? Why did you fall from the pavilion? Have you really forgotten everything?"

Hua Zui freezes. In a daze, she remembers the crowds at her home that day, the officials celebrating her birthday.

Only she was heartbroken and drinking to forget.

All because she had received some news.

Wen Chenzhi was getting married.

[Planned for a long time]

[Childhood friends become lovers]

[Some parts are like a campus romance set in ancient times, at university]

Note:

1. Happy ending, both are each other's first and only. A sweet little story.

2. Both the gong and shou have flaws; neither is perfect.

3. An alternate world with lots of original worldbuilding. If that's not your thing, please don't read.

Theme: Pursue what you want