ShuiShu

Meili is a once-in-a-generation beauty raised in secrecy in the inner courtyards. To keep her safe from the palace concubine selections, her family conspires to make everyone, including her, believe that she's ugly. The secret's revealed when 3 peeping Tom’s get more than they bargained for spying on the 'ugly sister' bathing.
The perverts are best friends, a young commander, the second prince, and an admired poet, and the 3 young men compete fiercely for her affections. As Meili emerges from 16 years in seclusion, her deeply rooted body dysmorphia has hilarious consequences as she misreads her interactions with men and proves to be a far more complex puzzle to woo than any of them are equipped for.
A cdrama romcom where a young girl is a glittering prize trying her hardest not to be won.
[#teen #lovequadrangle #historicalromance #romcom #chinesedrama #sweetromance] 
EXTRACT: Meili slipped out of her robe and sat on a ledge in the warm pool. Her long black hair cascaded down her back, tiny silver bells tinkled as she moved.
It felt wonderful to be free of her chest binding. It was starting to get quite painful. She didn't dare stop wearing it in case it encouraged her already disconcertingly large breasts to keep expanding.
It was onto this scene that the Commander, the Prince and the poet happened, as they soundlessly raised their heads above the peaked roofline. For a full minute not one of them moved or breathed.
Her long hair covered her generous curves, allowing tantalising glimpses. She reached behind her neck to push back her hair.
Commander Bai, realising what was about to happen, clamped each of his hands firmly over the eyes of the Prince and Tan Bowen. A fight broke out on the ridge-line as the men clawed and scratched in a panicked attempt to see what came next.
Meili looked up in fright, just as the commander forcefully pushed his two friends, sliding them down the steep rooftop.
For just a split second, the eyes of Commander Bai and Meili met.

Sharing a Pavilion With You

"The Prime Minister just took tea in the Second Prince's chambers," Eunuch Feng reported to the Emperor when they were alone in his chamber.

"Did he now?" the Emperor mused, pulling on his goatee. "What did they discuss?"

"A closer alliance, Lord. Possibly through marriage."

The Emperor had been watching his second son grow more and more bold in court; turning up every day, stepping into political issues… It might be time to crush his aspirations before they turned dangerous, he thought.

With the reports he was receiving about young Bai Li's training methods and the loyalty he was engendering from his soldiers; it might be time to put that wildcard he had been waiting to use into play.

Given the circumstances, Mei Meili would 'kill two birds with one stone', so to speak, allowing him to pull both men into line at the same time.

He turned to his Chief Eunuch. "Take down this edict and deliver it to the Mei family this morning."

Court Lady Mei