[Bright and Cunning Imperial Medical Bureau Physician x Brooding, Obsessive Young Emperor]
Shi Lan sometimes wondered if she had owed Xiao Yanzhao something in a past life.
Otherwise, why was he injured every time she ran into him?
The first time they met, he was lying unconscious outside the Imperial Medical Bureau.
She dragged him inside, carefully prepared medicine and simmered broth, and spent three days and nights bringing him back from the brink.
When the young man woke, he smiled, his eyes curving into crescents. "Thank you, Doctor Sister. My name is A Zhao."
His smile was sweet and charming, and she couldn't help but feel for him.
They bumped into each other again at a street corner, where she saw him bandaging a wound on his back by himself.
The wound was frighteningly deep, but his face was expressionless, his gaze so cold that Shi Lan could hardly recognize him as the innocent young man who had smiled at her the first time they met.
Only when he noticed her watching and looked up did the gloom in his eyes vanish, replaced by that same harmless expression. He smiled and said, "Doctor Sister, it's you again."
The third time, she received a letter from him with just three words: "Come save me."
When she arrived, she saw him leaning against a wall, barely breathing and covered in blood.
Yet he still managed to curl his lips into a smile and said to her, "Doctor Sister, sorry to trouble you, but could you save me one more time?"
Shi Lan stood there, her breathing thrown into disarray. She thought, Enough is enough.
But in the end, she still walked over and crouched beside him, soothing him softly. "...A Zhao, I'm here."
*
The first sixteen years of Xiao Yanzhao's life had been a long, precarious journey on thin ice.
He knew when to stay silent, when to bow his head, and when to pretend not to know anything.
He had always kept up his disguise so well that no one remembered he was still only a sixteen-year-old boy.
He had thought the rest of his life would be the same: going on alone until the day he could no longer stand.
Then came the day he collapsed outside the Imperial Medical Bureau.
As he drifted in and out of consciousness, he heard someone prattle on about how "ill-omened" he was, yet still feed him medicine one spoonful at a time.
He had thought it was a hallucination before death, until he woke and saw her.
She frowned, her movements rough, but her eyes shone like a ray of warm sunlight.
She became the only sun in his shadowed life.
But the sun should not be trapped behind palace walls, nor tainted by shadows and fade away.
So he was willing to hide his claws and be nothing more than the gentle, obedient "A Zhao" she remembered.
He would keep making her pity him, love him, and find it impossible to leave him.
With love, he would make the sun his alone.
Reading Guide:
1. Shi Lan x Xiao Yanzhao. Both are virgins | 1v1 | An equal and healthy relationship
2. The early story should focus on daily life at the Imperial Medical Bureau. Later, it will gradually turn toward court politics and the frontier.
3. The heroine does not know the hero's true identity at first. He will eventually be unmasked midway through the story.
4. The heroine will focus on her own career and will not be confined by the role of empress.
5. The hero will absolutely never use his status or power to force the heroine. He couldn't bear to.
6. Once the story officially begins, the blurb and setting may change substantially, but the characters will stay the same.
7. Finally, thank you, dear readers, for adding this story to your collection. I hope you enjoy reading it~
Theme: I will never be anyone's appendage, even if I love you
