The newly appointed Hanlin Academy editor Ji Qingjia has unwittingly noticed some suspicious marks appearing on his wife's body.
He has always been gentle and considerate. Knowing that his young wife is delicate and affectionate, he only uses four parts of his strength out of ten. Even so, she often finds it hard to bear, curling her fingers in his hair and calling him husband through her tears.
His wife's name is Xiaoyu.
He loves Xiaoyu very much, more than words can say. Everything about her is adorable, and he can never love her enough.
They married young, and have been husband and wife for only a year. Their love is still in its first flush, so after hesitating for only a moment, he suspects he must be imagining things.
When he asks her about it in the morning, his wife is looking down as she gently ties his belt. Her voice is thick with tears and her eyes are red as she explains that she simply bumped into something by accident.
Ji Qingjia takes her hand, heart aching, and promises to be more careful with her from now on.
His wife murmurs, "Mm."
As she sees him off, she shyly kisses his cheek and softly asks if she can go out that afternoon.
Ji Qingjia agrees without suspicion.
It happens to be the season for the autumn hunt. The emperor has personally named him as one of his attendants and permitted him to bring his family along.
Remembering how his wife is carefree and loves to travel, he happily returns home to tell her.
He expects her to be delighted, but Xiaoyu has come down with a severe cold and is lying in bed, eyes glistening with tears and breath faint. She regretfully tells him she may not be able to go.
Ji Qingjia desperately wants to stay home and care for his sick wife, but the emperor summoned him. If he does not go, it would be defying an imperial order, so he can only leave with great reluctance, instructing the servants to take good care of her.
While away on the hunt, he writes to her constantly, asking whether she is feeling better.
His wife replies every day, but for some reason her handwriting is hurried and messy, as though she wrote in a rush...
He must simply miss her terribly.
So when the young, valiant emperor rides past, holding his newly favored consort in his arms,
the breeze lightly lifts the veil over the consort's face...
He thinks, in a daze, that he catches a glimpse of the wife who should be at home, sick in bed and waiting for him.
She is nestled in the emperor's arms, her lips swollen and tears streaming down her face.
...Ji Qingjia thinks he must be losing his mind with longing.
On a distant mountaintop,
the emperor holds his minister's wife's slender waist, casually takes her hand, and sets it on the bow.
He aims at her husband, the young, handsome new Hanlin Academy scholar below, standing there bereft and stunned.
Her lawfully wedded husband, with whom she exchanged vows before heaven and earth.
He feels a wildfire of jealousy devouring his heart.
The emperor's strong fingers slip between the trembling fingers of his minister's wife. Leaning close to her fair, delicate ear, he says with obsessive malice, "Look at him one more time, and I'll kill him."
*
The emperor is a madman who kills whoever the heroine loves, and when he goes crazy, even turns on himself.
The husband loves the heroine enough to die for her, but that does not stop him from being gentle and tearful before he turns dark and loses his mind.
The heroine is not chaste. Both men are virgins and extreme romantics. The husband is gentle to a fault at first, but later turns dark. The emperor is a deranged, sinister tyrant from beginning to end, cruel in the way emperors of a feudal dynasty can be.
The heroine will not remain faithful to one man. She will keep switching between the two.
This story will have pretty much every kind of coercive romance trope. The emperor and the husband take turns going crazy, but the ending will definitely be happy. I haven't decided who she'll end up with or who gets to join the relationship yet. Everyone's here for romance, so there's no need for the finale to get too ugly, right (?) The heroine may be the only real protagonist in this book...
Here's a section of the husband's inner monologue.
*
Later, Ji Qingjia would think, nearly on the verge of collapse: When did his wife begin to change?
Was it that moment of distraction and detachment, lasting only a second, when they were lying together and she was swept up in passion?
Or was it when he realized that his charming, innocent wife had somehow acquired the dignified bearing of the noble ladies in the palace?
That was the sort of bearing only the most powerful person in the world could instill over time.
His beloved wife, Xiaoyu.
He loved her so much that he could die for her.
[Blurb written in October 2024]
Theme: Have a healthy relationship and be a well-adjusted person.
Little Double Hill
Twin Red Beans
The Cold Scent of the Golden Incense Burner
Jade-Thin and Fragrant
A Late Visit in Full Makeup
Love After the Fall
Honey Pastries
Beneath Their Mercy
A Little Silver Hook Hanging Idly from the Jeweled Curtain
Snow in the Incense Cage
Soft Cinnabar
Once More, the Jade Tower Blooms Like Snow