8
367words
Unlike my elder brother Arthur, I was never my parents' priority, though they provided tutors.
Only when marriage loomed did I understand those years of training: preparation for a match.
Father secured Arthur's future by betrothing me to General Davis. Everyone praised the brilliant match.
I disliked it. It didn't matter.
The night before the wedding, Mother whispered Davis already had a true love.
A farmer's daughter who once saved his life.
Installing a concubine before the wife arrived—unheard of impropriety in the capital.
No wonder they settled for me, a minor official's daughter; easier to control.
I despised this fate. Perhaps Heaven heard me, for I fainted entering the bridal chamber.
I awoke in a stranger's body. She was also named Maya.
Learning through her memories she'd died raging at a novel, I smiled faintly at her fiery spirit.
Curiosity led me to read the novel.
Horror mounted. The story depicted my own world, my own life.
I was an insignificant pawn.
As the plot unfolded, the other Maya faded.
"Succumbed to illness." Those scant words were her epitaph.
Relief washed over me—I was free of that book—mingled with fear for the Maya now trapped there.
As a spectator, I watched the "protagonists" climb to happiness over my corpse.
Suddenly, I understood the other Maya's fury.
Scouring the novel's comments, I found no trace of her critique.
As if she'd never written it.
Exploring this new world, I found it utterly unlike Aethelgard.
No polygamy. Women lived free and independent.
No longer defined by husbands, they pursued passions and competed alongside men.
My childhood skills—music, chess, calligraphy, painting—weren't tools to snare a husband or please men, but means to build my own life.
After deliberation, I became a zither teacher.
An unimaginable path before.
Life improved, yet unease lingered.
Revisiting the novel, I found its plot transformed.
From the wedding night, the story had bolted like a wild horse.
I realized: ThatMaya was truly gone.
Seeing her divorce Davis, bear children, and find lasting companionship, my anxious heart finally settled.
Reading the protagonists' final fate, I smiled softly.
Flowers bloom along the path. So do we.
(The End)
