Chapter Two
I know I said that I needed the memories of this body but I did NOT want to get it in such a painful way. My head feels like it's splitting apart. God, it hurts!!! It hurts so much. I want to faint so that I can be saved from this awful pain but I can't. So I rolled on the floor a few times while encouraging myself.
'You can do this Lou, you can get through this'
So, I roll around for a few minutes, and an extra minute because I just felt like it. OK, back to the topic of the memories. We're all curious but I must say that this is a kind of cliché story amongst the web novels I'd read before but what can I say? I wasn't given the opportunity to choose the body I wanted to transmigrate into. So I'll have to deal with it. I mean, couldn't I have woken up in a body that belongs to someone that's not a reject because this reject is not JUST on a local level, it's on a national and possibly international level.
OK, I'm off topic again. This body belongs to, get it, a Prince and a rejected one at that. You didn't see that one coming, did ya? I mean, seriously, a rejected Prince. 'Focus Lou.' The surprising part is that the previous owner of this body had lived a whole life full of regret and was given another chance to redeem himself but that won't be possible since I've taken over. This body belongs to a Prince, Yan Feng, the second Prince of the Yan Empire, and there are quite a few similar empires and kingdoms scattered all over this world from what I gather in a time where there is no plumbing, no cars, no electricity and worse, no Internet, WiFi, laptops or smartphones. How am I going to survive here?! HOW?! 'Damn it, focus'
This body, I should probably start accepting that this body belongs to me now. So, the previous owner of this body was the Prince, the second Prince of the Yan Empire who is hated by his whole family. His father, the Emperor, doesn't like his sight because he looks so much like his mother. The Empress doesn't like him either also because he looks like his mother who was more beautiful than she was. 'I'm getting the whole evil step mother vibe here. Could this get any more cliché?' The Emperor's concubines do not like him, the other Princes and Princesses do not like him, none of them, not a single one. 'What a sad life'. The nobles and officials don't like him, down to even the servants in the Palace. 'What a sad, sad life'.
As a result of this, not many people interacted with him while he was growing up. He only had his mother and her two servants who came with her from her family. But his mother died when he was 16 and the treatment got worse. Two years after the death of his mother, when he was 18, he was to be engaged without his consent to the son of a noble. His name was Lu An and he was an outcast in his family too.
I should mention that there is no discrimination against marriages between 2 men in this world. It isn't common but it is allowed. And it's rare for a man to be the wife so they are usually married as concubines.
Lu An's father was a rich Count in the Capital but his mother was a female servant who his father raped when he was drunk. She got pregnant with Lu An. But he didn't like her and so she was not treated well by everyone in the family. The most she was given by the first wife was a little room at the back of his estate and a meager allowance. She was not able to take proper care of Lu An even when he was sick, the most she could do was get him wild herbs. This damaged his body and made him sickly.
Yan Feng didn't like Lu An very much, and didn't like the fact that he was engaged to be married to him either. Yan Feng had always hoped and dreamed of being accepted into the royal family and being acknowledged as the second Prince. He also felt that he owed it to his mother to do this. Being married to Lu An was not going to help him achieve this dream, so he really didn't like Lu An. After their marriage, he didn't treat Lu An very well, he treated him horribly I must say. He neglected him so much. All Yan Feng did was try to get involved in the politics of the empire and when things didn't go his way, he would take out his frustrations on Lu An. This continued for years but Lu An never complained and always took whatever he was given in good faith.
A few years later, Yan Feng's dream of being accepted had been achieved to a degree. He'd gotten his own subordinates and a few supporters. He was able to take part in the court and in political meetings. He had even been able to get married to one of the daughters of a Duke. But, as someone who didn't grow up involved in the schemes of the royal family and as someone who was sheltered by his mother, he wasn't very good at scheming. As a result, he did not know that he was being led into a trap, one that would strip him of everything and even take his life. By the time he found out, he had already walked into the trap, had been poisoned and he had lost everything.
It turned out that all the support he had and the progress he had made in the empire were just part of the scheme, down to his marriage. He'd been walking into a trap from the very beginning. It had all been an elaborate scheme, a scheme by the Empress. She felt that he would be a threat to her first son who was also the first Prince because the Emperor had yet to elect the Crown Prince. And she just hated his sight. So, she'd planned to take him out and kill him in quite a roundabout way I must say.
So, Yan Feng had nothing left, he had no one beside him, even his wife had left him. He was a classic example of being back to square one. But he wasn't completely alone. There was still Lu An, whom he had thrown to the back of his mind and forgotten about. Lu An actually had always loved him and he'd stayed despite the beatings and the harsh neglect. So when Yan Feng lost everything and couldn't get up from his bed as a result of the harm the poison did to his body, Lu An was the only one who stayed. Yan Feng regretted everything when he saw the way Lu An looked but still took care of him. Lu An, by now, was just a shadow of his former self, he had lost a lot of weight, looked so thin and was always sick, it had been through the help and care of his mother's servants that he'd been able to live for so long. For the last few months Yan Feng lived, all that he felt was sadness and regret, he regretted the choices he had made and how he had treated this kind man who had loved and stayed by him. So, he prayed that he would be given a chance to choose again and he vowed that he would not make the same choices he'd made. And, most of all, he would make sure to give Lu An the love he deserved and didn't get from him.
Hmm, I have just one word to describe this Prince. IDIOT. A huge one. Even I could tell from the beginning that everything was a trap. How could he not see it? Well, he was quite naive. But he's scum for treating the poor Lu An that way, that was just wrong. You don't lay your hands on the person you're married to, be it a man or a woman. That's the worst. Pathetic. I certainly don't feel sorry for the previous owner, I just feel sorry for the poor guy who loved and stayed by him.
Now that I have gotten the memories, at least I can get through this. But, if these memories are correct, I took over the 18 year old body of the Prince, which means that in a few days I'll be engaged to Lu An. This will be tricky. One thing is sure though, I don't want to be a Prince or be a part of the royal family or even have anything to do with it, that's a mess I don't want to be involved in. So I'd better find a way out. I'll help Lu An too, since I won't be able to get out of getting married to him. I've never really thought about my sexuality before I came here. I was always focused on my studies and getting into culinary school so dating was not on my mind at all.
So I don't know how to feel about getting engaged and then marrying a man. But I'll at least take care of him and give him the respect he deserves. He has suffered in his previous life, I can't make him suffer again. I have to somehow find a way to get both of us out of this dangerous palace and possibly out of this capital city.
-------------------
A few days later, I was summoned by the Emperor and the Empress for a discussion. I can finally start putting the plans I'd thought about into action.