An Accidental Spring

Editor's note: [Reading Guide:

A sweet little selfcest story

Blurb started on: 2024.8.19

The leads are not romantically involved until both are adults

Title taken from the song "Accidental Spring" by Loco and Yuju

1v1, older woman and younger woman

Age gap: 5 years

A cold, ruthless science fanatic who turns herself into her lover, a fox demi-human X a tsundere, teary-eyed, fiercely possessive winged woman

Inspired by a space-fantasy setting with beastfolk and supernatural abilities

Lots of original worldbuilding

Kindergarten-level writing. This whole story is made up as I go, so don't read if that's not your thing

Blurb supplement screenshot: 2024.8.23]

A tsunami struck the imperial laboratory on the planet Lia. The fox demi-human scientist Jiang Jinyin clutched a corpse as she sank into the cold, endless depths of the sea.

As she died, Jiang Jinyin wished she could see the spring she had loved as a girl one more time.

When she opened her eyes again, Jiang Jinyin was back in her original world.

Among the ruins, she found a girl with broken wings, covered in wounds, and wearing a fierce expression. She was a butterfly-clan and winged-folk hybrid.

This was her past self at fifteen, before anyone had labeled her 1096: Chi Chunran.

Jiang Jinyin took Chi Chunran to a temporary shelter and returned to her old line of work, resolving to train her younger self into the winged folk's strongest general.

--

At fifteen, Chi Chunran lived in the mud, enduring a life of discrimination, until she happened to meet that cold woman.

Like the scientists who wanted to turn her into a human weapon, the woman took her back and trained her rigorously, all in the name of advancing her research.

At sixteen, Chi Chunran was sent by the woman she hated to join the Imperial Army, where she found a different kind of freedom.

At seventeen, Chi Chunran distinguished herself in the army. The woman merely said, "You still have a long way to go."

Unwilling to admit defeat, the girl stayed away from the place she was supposedly meant to call home for five years. At twenty-two, she became a general, while the woman became the Empire's most dazzling and formidable scientist.

At twenty-four, Chi Chunran returned home injured and found an unexpected guest: the scientist's blind-date match, a lion demi-human with strength to spare but no brains to speak of.

The scientist cared about him.

The scientist had eyes only for him.

The scientist was always cool and distant with her, and referred to her only as her younger sister.

After a training exercise, the young general kissed the scientist's cold face through her tears and pleaded in a soft, wheedling voice, "Can you marry only me?"

Twenty-nine-year-old Jiang Jinyin hadn't known her past self could be such a crybaby. She slipped a ring onto the general's ring finger, covered in old scars. "I bought this ring two years ago. Can we have the wedding in spring?"

"I met you in an accidental spring. Since then, even the dark times we've shared have become the path that brought us back to love and growth together."

Theme: Love others as you love yourself. The person I became still loves the person I used to be.