She Said Her Love for Me Was an Act

[Buttoned-Up Old-Fashioned Type x Expert Flirt / □□ / Everyday Life / Sweet]

At Prince Jin Yan Qing's eighteenth-birthday banquet, someone infected him with a gu. If it is not lifted before he comes of age, he will suffer unbearable torment and die.

There are two ways to break the curse:

One: Find the person who planted the gu and have it removed.

Two: Within three months, harmonize yin and yang with the person he loves, every other day. After two years, the gu will die on its own.

But the gu master who infected Prince Jin was executed on the spot, and Prince Jin has always kept himself chaste, with no one attending him in his chambers.

The Empress has no choice but to send someone to find him a woman.

She must be carefully chosen: she cannot be of high birth or ugly, but she must not be too beautiful or too scheming, either.

Ideally, she should be clever, sensible, healthy, plain-looking, and from an ordinary commoner family.

First bring her into the prince's manor and find a way to make Prince Jin fall in love with her. Once his curse is lifted two years later, give her a thousand taels of gold and send her far away.

As luck would have it, Song He is just such a woman.

*

Washerwoman Song He has no parents. Her greatest dream in life is to get rich overnight, own a country estate and farmland, and take in a live-in husband.

But washing clothes doesn't pay enough, and it takes too long.

So when someone approaches her and asks her to serve Prince Jin, who is said to have no interest in women, for two years, with a hundred taels of gold and her freedom at the end of it, she can buy as many estates, fields, and men as she wants!

Song He: There's an offer like that?

Song He: I'm in!

*

The day Prince Jin's curse is lifted, Song He gets what she wants and leaves the manor overnight with her banknotes in hand.

She doesn't want to serve that bastard for another single day!

When they recruited her, the old matron said Prince Jin was in poor health and needed her attentive care.

But as she rubs her waist, now a whole size smaller, she can't help thinking that someone else is the one who really needs tonics.

Oh, well. She'll treat those hundred taels of gold as compensation for restoring her own health.

Song He happily uses her gold to buy an estate and farmland, and even buys a mute man with a fantastic physique to be her live-in husband.

Though the mute is clumsy at work and has scars on his face that he has to hide behind a mask, his service is absolutely impeccable.

Song He fondly strokes his sweat-damp chest and praises him sincerely: You're so much better than that bull of a prince.

The mute suddenly leans close to her ear. "So you mean I've improved quite a bit, Your Highness?"

Song He: ?!

*Not quite a marriage-before-love story, more like a fling (laughs)

*An upright, late-blooming, buttoned-up old-fashioned type who avoids women x A money-loving, freedom-loving, flexible expert flirt

*She really loves money. Luckily, I have plenty of it.

*Should be a sweet little story, starting when the old matron comes to recruit her for the prince's manor

*He loves her so much!!!!!!!

Theme: The best way to love someone is to live the life you want.