Page 23 of The Scholar's Improper Wife

The thought circled his mind like a persistent mosquito.She knows my desire for her.

He’d replayed the lake scene so many times it had worn grooves into his memory. The warmth and softness of her body clinging to him. the way her eyes had widened when she’dtouched him. The sharp intake of breath. The spectacular shade of crimson that had flooded her whole body when sherealized.

What if I’ve become the villain in her story? Some lecherous scoundrel from a poorly written huaben?

What if she never slides another draft across the table with that small, secret smile, never lets me tease her about her daydreams again?

And then—thiswas the fear that made his breath catch—what if I was wrong about everything? What if she just sees me as a trusted friend who grew up with her, but not—not someone she can love as a husband?

The possibility gnawed at him with the persistence of bookworms through precious manuscripts.

He’d tried to throw himself into his studies. The Imperial Examinations loomed, after all, a perfectly reasonable excuse to bury himself in classical texts and treatises on governance. But somehow, every passage reminded him of her. A line about peach blossoms? Her. A philosophical treatise on suppression of base desires in gentlemen?Extremelyunhelpful.

He’d written notes. So many notes. Casual ones:“Si-er, I found a bookshop you might enjoy.”Too obvious. Apologetic ones:“About the lake incident—”Mortifying. Poetic ones quoting classical texts? Absolutely not; she’d laugh herself sick.

His floor had become a graveyard of crumpled paper.

In desperation, he’d even tried channeling his overflowing emotions into writing a new huaben. Perhaps if he poured all this yearning onto the page, gave it to some fictional man pining after his oblivious lady, he could excise it from his own chest.

Nothing worked.

The emotions remained, swelling like a river during the flood season, threatening to overflow their banks.

After a month of this exquisite torture, he’d cracked. Grabbed fresh paper with shaking hands, written the note in hisneatest calligraphy—because even in crisis,standards mattered—and dispatched it before he could reconsider.

Meet me tomorrow at the library.

Simple. Direct. Gave nothing away.

And now, waiting in the library with snow falling outside the latticed windows, Ting-zhi discovered that anticipation was somehow worse than uncertainty.

He had positioned himself at the far table—the one by the window with the best light, where he could watch the door without appearing to watch the door.

When Yun-si stepped through, snowflakes still caught in her hair, something in his chest unclenched.

Thank the ancestors.

He’d half-convinced himself she wouldn’t come. That the mortifying branch-and-dragon-rod incident had finally driven her away for good. That he’d receive a polite note citing sudden illness or family obligations or literally any excuse to avoid him for the next decade.

Instead, here she was. Cheeks pink from cold, clutching a piece of paper like it contained an antidote to poison.

Ting-zhi turned a page of the book he wasn’t reading. “Si-er. I was beginning to think you’d decided to brave the literary world without further assistance.”

“I—” She paced across the room in small careful steps, and stopped at the edge of his table. “I need to amend my manuscript.”

“Mmm. Naturally.” He gestured to the chair opposite. “Sit.”

She didn’t.

Instead, she gripped the paper tighter, knuckles white. Her gaze fixed somewhere on his left cheek—the classic Yun-si avoidance technique.

“I have a few more research topics,” she managed. “Just a few.”

He leaned back, folding his arms. “Are you planning to share these topics, or shall I divine them through meditative contemplation?”

Her ears flushed pink.

There it is.