After We Broke Up, My Straight Childhood Friend Went After Me

Coming soon: The Princess Bride Returns to Her Wedding Night. Blurb at the very bottom.

Zuo Xian was dumped because her partner thought she wasn't forward enough and was too boring.

Heartbroken, Zuo Xian spent a while moping around before her frustrated friend dragged her out to socialize.

It's just a breakup! I'll introduce you to someone new, and I promise you'll like her!

Her friend sang the praises of the woman she wanted to set Zuo Xian up with. Supposedly, the woman was beautiful, graceful, successful, respectful to her elders, and, most importantly... very good at it.

But when Zuo Xian asked who the woman was, her friend dodged the question. Zuo Xian understood: the woman was a player who had many women wrapped around her finger.

It wasn't until she actually met this player that Zuo Xian's worldview shattered for the first time.

The graceful woman seated across from her was none other than her childhood friend, Tao Ran, with whom she'd cut ties years ago!

"Ms. Tao... weren't you straight?"

"I was just young and foolish back then."

Tao Ran tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The simple gesture looked both gentle and alluring, and Zuo Xian couldn't connect her with the image of a womanizer.

Zuo Xian looked at the woman she'd once had a crush on and confessed to, and was at a loss for words.

"Zuo Xian, don't you miss me?"

"..."

As the full red lips before her uttered those words, they sounded utterly unfamiliar to Zuo Xian, yet her heart pounded traitorously.

"I've been thinking about you all these years."

No, no, this had to be a dream.

Zuo Xian pinched her thigh hard, suppressing both the urge to be Tao Ran's dog and the tears the pain brought on.

Falling for a straight woman once was an accident. Falling twice would just mean she was pathetic.

But as the old saying goes, appetite and desire are human nature.

When Tao Ran made her an adult invitation, Zuo Xian had no dignity left and gave in.

Women, whether straight or gay, have desires. That meant Zuo Xian no longer had to agonize over whether Tao Ran was straight. She could simply enjoy herself.

But as they tangled together in bed, Zuo Xian gazed hazily at the unrequited love of her youth, so close she could reach out and touch her, and the resentment she'd felt as a teenager rose up again.

Zuo Xian asked her why. Why invite her? Why choose her?

She asked so many questions, but she didn't dare ask why Tao Ran had rejected her back then.

Because the answer had been written in her memories all along.

Tao Ran used to be straight, and now...

She was still straight.

Ms. Tao, bent into a spring: "..."

Please note:

1. Zuo Xian has an ex-girlfriend. Readers who insist on both leads being sexually inexperienced, please don't read.

2. The straight-girl thing is an excuse. This is not a story about turning a straight woman gay.

Coming-soon blurb:

In her previous life, Gu Shuning was the only princess of a defeated nation. She was forced into a political marriage with the eldest princess of Chu, Mu Yunwei.

Everyone knew the Chu Emperor was using the marriage to keep Mu Yunwei in check. From the very start, it was a doomed union.

Yet Mu Yunwei was gentle and attentive to Gu Shuning, and Gu Shuning fell for her kindness.

She believed Mu Yunwei's expressions of love, thinking they were a pair brought together by fate despite the odds, as if destiny had made them for each other.

Just as she was lost in the beauty of her beloved, Mu Yunwei defied all opposition, tore up the truce, and marched her army through Gu Shuning's country's gates, beheading her father.

Bloodied from battle, Mu Yunwei became the undisputed heir to the throne of Great Chu.

Everyone praised her many victories, but no one cared that her glorious military record had been built on the blood and flesh of Gu Shuning's family and countrymen.

Gu Shuning hated her, and hated herself even more.

She wanted them both to die.

But the Emperor of Chu's poisoned wine arrived before Mu Yunwei could return in triumph.

Gu Shuning refused to wait passively for death. She drew her sword and charged into the palace, only to die beneath the guards' blades.

*

No one had imagined that the dead could come back to life.

Gu Shuning was reborn on the day she married Mu Yunwei. She looked at the woman holding her hand and reciting their vows. She smiled, but tears began to spill down her cheeks.

Mu Yunwei furrowed her brow in concern, asking her again and again if she was all right.

Hate. She hated her so much.

Why, after living her life over, did she find that she couldn't bring herself to die together with Mu Yunwei when she saw her?

She didn't want to kill Mu Yunwei.

But she wouldn't let the past repeat itself.

She would use Mu Yunwei to enter the court, become the woman behind her, and make Mu Yunwei unable to live without her.

Like Mu Yunwei in her previous life, Gu Shuning became soaked in blood, yet she held Mu Yunwei in her arms with contentment.

In a tender, gentle voice, she asked her,

"Yunwei, do you like the new shackles I had made today?"

Mu Yunwei, who already held sway over the court, lowered her lashes and moved her hand. The shackles connected to the bedpost rattled softly.

She sighed. "It's time for court. Please let me go."

"Hm? And how should you ask me?"

The cool, aloof woman turned her face away, pressing her lips together with a hint of embarrassment.

"...Master, please."

Theme: Only by striving for what you want can you have a future.