Chapter 1

As I lay dying, Xie Xun kept demanding to know where my elder sister was.

Feeling charitable, I told him to bring his ear closer.

“She’s in… she’s…”

I smiled in satisfaction and breathed my last.

After death, my soul floated in the air, watching him rage.

“Song Jinxue, you’re cruel. Even at the end, you had to play one last trick on me.”

I watched him bury my remains far away. Watched him spend more than a decade searching for my sister.

Before he died, he came to my grave to warn me.

“You barged into my life, took the place that belonged to your sister, and caused her death in that fire.

“And you still won’t tell me where she’s buried…

“If there’s another life, don’t cling to me again.”

But in that new life, when he gripped my wrist and threatened me not to marry him, I found it rather funny.

Who wanted to marry him?

I had been reborn a year before he was.

I had already married someone else.

1

Peach blossoms bloomed. The spring banquet was lively.

One look told me Xie Xun had been reborn too.

He was still warning me in a low voice.

“Mother will choose my consort at the banquet. Don’t you dare swap your sister’s painting and take her place again.”

Then he turned away, his robes sweeping fallen petals from his feet.

Behind me, Xiaotao asked in confusion, “My lady, you’re already married. Why would the heir say such things?”

I rotated my aching wrist, watching his retreating back.

I had once asked myself why too.

Eventually, after thinking it over and over, I understood.

Perhaps he had never truly looked at me.

His gaze always passed over me and lingered on my sister.

He noticed every tiny change in her. Even a new shade of rouge could bring endless compliments.

As for me, he couldn’t be bothered to look. Only to brush me off.

Trying to ease the tension between us, my sister once pushed me, carefully dressed and made up, before him and told him to look properly.

He immediately turned and left.

All he said impatiently was, “What’s different? Who has time to look at her?”

So now he had no patience to notice my hair was already arranged in a married woman’s style.

A petal slowly drifted before me. Together with his words, it brought the memory back.

In my previous life, this very spring flower-viewing banquet had supposedly invited noble young ladies to admire blossoms.

In truth, the marquess’s wife had secretly arranged it to choose a consort for Xie Xun.

Young ladies moved around me. Some must have been warned by their elders. They were dressed with great elegance and decorum, quietly competing.

At this banquet in my previous life, I had begged my sister to swap paintings with me. I had won first place.

Expressionless, Xie Xun put the peach branch that signified his choice into my hand.

Delighted, his mother announced our betrothal before everyone.

I had thought perhaps he liked me a little too. He was merely a shy young man hiding it behind indifference.

I no longer remembered his expression that day. Given how much he disliked me, he must have been terribly unwilling.

His heart had always been with my sister. She was the one he wanted to marry.

Otherwise, learning the truth about the paintings wouldn’t have filled him with regret and made him treat me so much more coldly.

With that thought, I changed direction.

I returned to the banquet.

It had nothing to do with a married woman like me. But now that I remembered, I couldn’t let him have his wish in this life either.

2

Several people looked astonished to see me.

Behind me, young ladies covered their mouths with round fans. Their voices carried anyway.

“Isn’t Song Jinxue already married? What’s she doing here?”

“Who knows? The Song sisters and the heir were so close. I thought he’d choose one of them. Then somehow, Song Jinxue married a year ago.”

“Shh. She still has an elder sister…”

I shut them out.

I spotted my sister resting in the waterside pavilion.

Seeing me brightened her.

“I thought you weren’t coming.”

Her tone held a little reproach.

“I thought you’d forgotten your own sister now you’re married.”

I knew she wasn’t truly angry. She only blamed me for returning to the capital without visiting her.

I hurried to call her my dear sister, then my very dear sister, apologizing and explaining until she laughed.

Jiang Huaiyou had just been transferred back to the capital. There were connections to renew, favors to arrange, so many things to do. I had the household to manage too. I truly hadn’t had time.

She pinched my cheek.

“I’m not really angry. It’s just been so long since we sat and talked.”

“Does Jiang Huaiyou treat you well?”

“When you fought with Xie Xun, I thought you were only angry. Who knew you’d marry as soon as you said you would? You frightened me half to death.”

I paused.

I remembered that clearly.

It was, after all, when I had first been reborn.

For the Flower Festival, I had wanted to go out at night with Xie Xun and worship the Flower Goddess together. I sent him a letter.

Unexpectedly, he agreed.

His reply contained only a brief, flourishing line.

[Yes. Understood.]

I turned it over and over, reading it for ages. Something soft and buoyant seemed about to spill from my heart.

My sister sighed with relief, but couldn’t resist teasing.

“Now you finally know how he feels.”

“Everyone knows what it means when an unmarried man and woman worship the Flower Goddess together. Xie Xun just says the opposite of what he means. He’s shy.”

Full of hope, I dressed and made myself up carefully.

Many men in the street wore flower garlands.

If interested, they took them off and offered them to the young women they liked.

I stood quietly beneath a pear tree in a less crowded spot, waiting patiently.

First, a young gentleman approached, blushing as he offered his garland.

Then a second. A third.

One, bolder than the others, pushed his straight into my arms.

I couldn’t throw them away or keep them. I didn’t know what to do.

Xie Xun arrived with a terrible expression, not even brushing the pear blossoms from his shoulder.

He came forward and surveyed the garlands in my arms.

“Dressed up so extravagantly and drawing admirers. You shouldn’t be standing here. Swap places with the Flower Goddess’s statue and sit up there yourself.”

“And you still want to marry me? I will never bring a flirt into the Xie family.”

“If not for your sister, I’d never have lost my judgment and come.”

As he spoke, he casually threw his own garland into the river beside us. The current swept it away.

More people gathered.

I felt uncomfortable in every inch of my body. I wanted to change into plain clothes, wipe off my makeup, remove my hairpins, and hide.

Under all those eyes, I was painfully embarrassed. My ears began ringing.

Eyes red, I spoke in anger.

“Who wants to marry you? Xie Xun, I hate you!”

3

Then I was reborn.

The lingering pain in my chest hadn’t faded. It came in waves, as though I were dying again, about to be submerged.

I cried bitterly and lay ill for a long time.

During that time, Xie Xun seemed to regret it. He sent me many things.

My sister looked at the room full of apology gifts, read his letter, then glanced at me anxiously.

Once, I would certainly have softened. I might even have invented excuses for him to comfort myself.

Now I felt only weary and dispirited. I couldn’t summon a flicker of feeling.

“Send it all back. I don’t like him anymore.”

Just then, my grandmother wrote that someone had proposed.

She had thoroughly checked his portrait, character, family, and background, enclosing everything in her letter. Did I want this marriage with the Jiang family? If not, I could write to refuse.

I considered it carefully and agreed.

Then I went to my grandmother’s home in Lingzhou to wait peacefully for my wedding.

My sister wrote during that time. Xie Xun had left the capital the day I returned his gifts. She had made inquiries: for some reason, he had gone to the far, bitterly cold north to find immortal flowers.

I wasn’t interested and didn’t reply.

I stayed in Lingzhou with Jiang Huaiyou.

Without his promotion, I would never have returned to the capital on my own.

“He treats me very well. I’m very happy.”

Coming out of my memories, I smiled.

Only when she saw I wasn’t pretending did my sister relax.

Then a trace of loneliness crossed her face. She murmured, “It’s good to be with someone you love…”

I gripped her hand.

“If you trust me, don’t show your talent in the painting contest later.”

Seeing her confusion, I said plainly, “The marquess’s wife arranged this banquet for Xie Xun. She’s choosing his consort.”

“Mother never told me…”

Startled, she seemed to understand and gave a rueful smile.

“No wonder she told me to paint beautifully, and to paint begonias because the marquess’s wife likes them.”

In my previous life, I had happened to hear about the selection. Knowing how I felt, my sister deliberately exchanged paintings with me.

The worry between her brows reminded me of the fire that followed.

Mother had always loved her. Yet for some reason, they fought terribly that day.

The next night, a great fire broke out in my sister’s courtyard.

It came fast and fierce, strangely so.

When it was extinguished, only my sister’s charred body remained.

Mother was overcome with grief and couldn’t manage the funeral.

I handled it myself.

In doing so, I discovered something wrong.

That burned body wasn’t my sister.

But I didn’t raise an alarm.