Episode 1
The banquets of the Western Xia were more lavish than those of any other nation.
The smell of oil was overpowering. My ears ached from the sound of the wind chimes, and I was blinded by the glitter of people’s jewelry in the sunlight.
But the most extravagant of all was my attire.
Peonies embroidered on fine red silk. My skirt puffed out with layers. My hair in a gauzy updo, my makeup so thick I could smell it in my nostrils.
I let out a tiny breath, barely able to keep myself dry. It was such a small sigh that Sibi noticed it and glared at me.
“Lady Sanya. What a frivolous sigh from someone who will be the Emperor’s consort today.”
That’s right.
I’m the Emperor’s concubine as of today, and you’re being so condescending to me, and a frivolous sigh sounds like a hot iced Americano.
Instead of saying it, I let out another sigh. I sigh again, still awkward with the reality of my situation.
Sanya Yeoran.
The youngest daughter of the Yoran family, now eight years old and about to be sold into the Emperor’s court.
And a supporting character in a reverse harem novel.
Inevitably, she is labeled as the one who will be killed.
And now it’s me.
A third sigh escaped my mouth.
* * *
There was a reverse harem novel. The story was nothing special. An emperor, a queen, and her husband, a lord.
The novel emphasized the power struggles of the male lords and the emotionless female lord.
However, there was one supporting character who appeared a few times in the novel.
Sanya.
She was one of the few female concubines of the emperor, and she was not even given an imperial surname. She was young, brilliant, and thirsty for affection.
Sanya clung to the emperor, who was the first to show me kindness. To gain his attention, she became pitiful, clever, and sometimes vicious.
The problem was that her behavior took too much of the female attention away from the male lords, and the male lords in this novel were much smarter than a child of only eight.
In the end, Sanya is executed for treason at the age of twelve.
Readers of the novel didn’t pay much attention to Sanya. She was a supporting character, a passing fancy, and they were tired of Sanya’s increasingly vicious behavior toward the end.
And so did I.
‘If only …… hadn’t possessed Sanya in the novel.’
Why her, I wondered, I was being fairly pedantic.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I was reminded of a line spoken by Guibi Mirina, one of the male lords, when Sanya died. I shuddered at the unnecessary creepiness of it all, and shook myself.
“Raise your heads.”
The majestically hushed voice echoed through the ballroom, silencing the music and laughter that had filled the room.
I meekly lifted my head and locked eyes with a pair of cool gray-green eyes.
A throne on the highest dais. Seated there was a black-haired woman. Her golden robes and crown were radiant.
Ye Hua Arun. The emperor of this country, and the heroine of this novel.
I stood still, watching as her eyes found me, and then widened.
She would rise to her feet and stalk toward me.
I was not mistaken: the Emperor sprang to her feet and stormed down the high staircase.
The concubines – and thus the lords – at her side tried to stop her, but to no avail.
Once she was in front of me, she knelt down. He was trying to get to eye level with me, but the fact that he was on his knees caused an immediate uproar.
“Lungs, Your Majesty!”
“How old are you?”
She asked me, ignoring the startled Sioux.
I bowed politely and replied.
“I passed my eighteenth birthday last month.”
Though I was actually well over twenty.
“What the hell…….”
I could hear her grinding her teeth.
I understood her bewilderment. Yeah. You knew you were getting a female concubine, but you didn’t realize she was only eight years old.
Sanya’s family, the Yoran family, was one of the seven founding families of the Western Xia.
Blessed by dragons and endowed with powerful abilities through their blood, the seven families stood at the pinnacle of power, and with that power came many privileges, but also obligations.
When a new emperor was crowned, they were required to provide him with a concubine.
A concubine might be an empress, or she might be a dozen or a hundred, and it was quite a bitter pill to swallow for them to give up a child who could succeed them or be sold into marriage to another noble family.
Of course, it was possible to catch the emperor’s eye with good looks and become the father of a crown prince, or to get a child into the service as a spy, but the chances of that usually converged on zero.
In a way, that was to be expected.
Just like the death of Sanya, the supporting character who was the favorite of the male lead, there was no such thing as a mistress emperor being loved by everyone.
When she was pushed to get information, she became a concubine for the first time in a hundred years and soon fell in love with the emperor, acting as if she would give him her liver and gallbladder, so it was inevitable that each family would hate to have a concubine.
The patriarch of the Great Yulan Family, Qi Yun Yulan, thought so too.
He wanted to bring in the weakest child, but whether it was a blessing or a curse, there were no weak children in the Great Yulan Family.
Unable to send them to the imperial palace because they were all useful, he found a young bastard he had forgotten about. A child who looked exactly like his father, but who had none of his talents.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Empress Guiyun sends Sanya off to the palace alone.
She squeezes out false tears as if she were offering up the youngest daughter she raised in Gyuzhong, and reaps the benefits.
Even then, the emperor, who had been indifferent for a long time and thought it was a concubine he had given away as if he had no choice, now realizes that the concubine of the Lulan family is only eight years old.
“Get up.”
After being lost in thought for a moment, I raised my head again when I heard the emperor’s voice. There was a mixture of confusion, pity, and regret in her eyes. That was a very reasonable reaction.
I’ve been kneeling in this uncomfortable wedding dress for two hours now.
I’d been kneeling in the middle of the ballroom for the entire banquet, and I couldn’t believe how young she was. It was a guilty enough situation.
Of course, if it were an ordinary tyrant emperor, he wouldn’t have cared if she was young or not, but the emperors of the Western Xia were all men of integrity, and this one, Ye Hua Arun, was no different.
She disliked the Ye family for disobeying orders, but she did not extend that to a child.
I didn’t heed her words, and I got up. No, I tried to get up.
“…… Yuck.”
I wobbled.
As soon as I stood up, I wobbled. My legs were numb from sitting down for so long. Or, to be more honest, I couldn’t feel my legs.
I bit my lip in frustration as I realized that I had built up an image of fragility in real time. I tried to brace myself as best I could, but unfortunately, my body collapsed and the Emperor caught me faster.
“Are you okay?”
Oh, shit. I cursed under my breath as I looked into the Empress’s eyes, which had grown wide with surprise. The emotion in her eyes was unmistakably favorable.
I slid my gaze from there to the Empress and her ladies-in-waiting behind her, and our eyes locked.
“Shit.
Sanya, in this body, had already been killed trying to win the emperor’s favor. I had to stay out of the emperor’s sight as much as possible.
But I really couldn’t help it. I couldn’t feel my legs.
And so I was honored to be the recipient of the Emperor’s support, which brought me to the attention of the Emperor’s men at once.
“I will send an envoy to …… your palace.”
At this point, his merciful majesty said, “Truly, the favor has brought tears to my eyes. Truly, I am tearfully ungrateful for the favor.
Could you please take care of the husbands who are glaring at me like they’re going to kill me behind your back?
But that doesn’t mean I can say that to the Emperor’s face, so I smiled weakly and carefully removed my hand from his arm.
“It’s okay, I just got a little carried away.”
I lied. I wasn’t okay at all. Now that I was standing, I could feel my legs again, but they were now incredibly numb. When I walked later, I would definitely move like a woodcarver.
But my answer was perfect, and the emperor hesitated in front of it. He couldn’t let his mistake go unnoticed.
“……, go back to the palace. I won’t make a big deal out of it.”
Second shit.
I thought so in her favor. No one would believe it, but it was me and the Emperor who were the stars of the evening. It was a wedding banquet, after all.
At such a banquet, I was being thoroughly ignored. No, not just ignored, but insulted.
My legs were sore, but I didn’t mind. In fact, it was sweet. If I could fade from memory so completely, the lords would stop caring about me.
The only problem was that I knew that the emperor would ask me to look up and see what kind of person I was, and that he would feel guilty when he realized that I was a child.
In the original, Sanya cries, emphasizing her weakness to the fullest.
The emperor, who felt guilty again, went to Sanya’s residence that night and apologized to the child. When Sanya asked him if he could stay by his side because he was having nightmares, he patted the child and stayed overnight.
Of course, the lords will not allow this to happen.
They begin to criticize Sanya for stealing the emperor from them, and Sanya confronts them about it. It was the beginning of disaster.
Now, then, what is the matter with the emperor’s congratulatory decree to me?
As I said, this was my wedding banquet. The Emperor has granted me a seat at the table where I am supposed to remain until the end, which means that I can go home.
Or rather, it meant that I had won her affections in the shortest time possible. No concubine had ever been favored by the emperor on her first day of marriage.
As proof of this, the concubines were very eager to please.
So this is what happens on the first day.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
I replied neatly, without further ado, and turned away. Hopefully, my creaky steps would be hidden beneath my thick wedding gown and the Emperor would not be forced to assist me.
