My Ex Promised Next Year So I Married His Teacher

Chapter 1 — The Price of “Next Year”

The steward’s runner caught me at the corridor turn, before I could slip back to the west wing.

“Miss Shen,” he said, palms rubbing together as if he could coax heat from air, “have you gathered this year”s ding tax?

I didn’t answer.

My hand went to the pouch at my waist by habit. It was too light. Inside, a few coins knocked once—one small, humiliating sound.

He saw it anyway. Servants always did.

“If you”re short, we can“well, we can help,” he offered quickly, as if the house had ever helped me with anything. “A little from this one, a little from that one” And besides

His face brightened with the kind of hope people lent out cheaply when it wasn’t theirs to spend.

“Next year,” he said, lowering his voice like a blessing. “Young Master said it himself. Next year he”ll definitely marry you.

Next year.

I’d been swallowing those words for three years. At first they went down sweet. Then they started to scrape.

Three years ago, my father“s name had been hauled through the court like a carcass dragged across stone. Our house was seized. The servants scattered before the winter even arrived. My father lived long enough to watch the last ink dry on the confiscation list”then his breath thinned, then stopped.

Before he died, he wrote to the Lin family. One letter, pleading. A second, begging. A third, with shaking hand: Fulfill the match. Take her in.

I waited in mourning clothes.

And while I waited, I paid.

The ding tax“people called it the Unmarried Women”s Levy in polite company“didn”t care about promises. It cared about registers. Once your name sat under “unwed” in the household books, the yamen wanted its coin every winter, and the amount rose as you aged, as if time itself collected interest.

The clerk kept the ledger in a lacquered drawer. The matchmaker kept a second ledger in red ink. Between them, a woman’s life stayed neatly arranged.

I forced my mouth into something like calm.

“I”ll manage, I said.

The runner exhaled as if I“d lifted a stone from his back instead of my own. ”Good. Good. Then next year

He hurried away, already forgetting my face.

The main courtyard was loud with life—silk on stone, laughter carried like perfume. The west wing was quieter in a way that felt deliberate. A locked moon gate separated me from the main residence most days. I was brought out at festivals so the household could show the promised bride existed. The rest of the year, the gate stayed shut, and my world narrowed to a small courtyard, an old table, a narrow bed, and a side door that opened onto an alley.

The runner had lied about one thing: no one pitched in for me. The Lin household gave me no allowance. No stipend. I lived here like a guest who had overstayed her welcome“except guests didn”t have to pay taxes to remain guests.

When I ran out of money, I wrote.

Poems for merchant daughters who liked to pretend they were born refined. Paintings for young ladies who wanted “talent” they could hang on a wall. I carried my work to a bookshop at the edge of the academy street and took whatever the keeper slid across the counter, no matter how low.

Some nights I couldn“t afford a candle. I wrote by moonlight, my brush moving slow and careful so I wouldn”t waste ink.

The first winter after my father died, the ding tax had cost me eight hundred cash—two full weeks of writing if the shopkeeper was in a good mood. The second winter, it rose by half. The third winter, it rose again. I learned to measure time not by seasons but by how much a single year could take from me.

That spring, I tried something new.

I took the engagement paper“creased soft from being unfolded and refolded a hundred times”and went to the Lin family matron’s door. I waited outside until my knees hurt.

A maid stepped out, glanced at the paper, and didn’t even offer to take it in.

“Madam is busy,” she said. “Young Master said next year.”

That was all.

I returned to the west wing with the paper still in my hand and the taste of dust on my tongue.

That afternoon, I was summoned to the main courtyard.

Lin Jingran leaned beneath the eaves as if the house itself tilted to shelter him. A folding fan turned lazily in his hand. He looked at me the way you looked at someone who had walked in with tea.

“You”re here,“ he said lightly. ”Still alive.

“I came to”

“You came to talk about marriage,” he cut in without raising his voice. His smile was pleasant, practiced. “Again.”

My throat tightened. “When will you marry me?”

He looked me up and down with mild amusement, as if I’d asked when he planned to notice the weather.

“Next year,” he said. The fan snapped open. “Your father just died. And you”re already eager to marry“don”t you find that unlucky?

Unlucky.

I was sixteen. In this city, sixteen came with a price tag.

I thought of the yamen clerk“s blank stare. I thought of my name inked under ”unwed.“ I thought of the way the levy climbed each year I didn”t marry, as if my body were a ledger the state could balance.

But I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

“I understand,” I said.

He leaned closer, voice turning playful. “You should be grateful. Not everyone gets to wait for me.”

Grateful.

I went back to my west wing, closed the door, and sat down at the table.

By nightfall, my wrist ached from writing. When it cramped, I shook it out and kept going. When my eyes blurred, I blinked hard and kept going.

Because winter was coming, and the ding tax didn“t accept ”next year.

At midnight, I pressed my palm to the engagement paper and tried to imagine the future as something other than waiting.

I couldn’t.

So I did what I always did.

I wrote.