Everyone knows that the powerful Minister Pei Heng is cold-blooded and stoic, but he is too harsh on the "adopted daughter" who is fostered in the mansion.
He taught her to hold a pen, but when her knuckles touched, she suddenly pulled away; he asked her to practice the piano, but she heard her absent-mindedness in the corridor. During the day, he was a high-ranking and strict teacher, but after nightfall, he sat quietly in front of her swaddling clothes until dawn.
At first she just wanted to survive, but later she wanted to uncover the mystery of her family's downfall. Until the rainy night, when she knelt in front of him soaked to the skin, and he put a robe on her with his own hands, and his fingertips brushed the side of her neck, making her feel hot.
"Master," she asked tremblingly, "are you keeping me here to atone for your sins, or..."
Before he finished speaking, he had pressed her against the door. His eyes were horrifyingly dark, but his voice was as light as a sigh:
"Stop asking. There are some answers you can't afford."
Later, at the palace banquet, she curled up in his arms with the medicinal properties of her body, and he broke the door and took her into the cold pool. Amid the roar of thunder, he kissed her wet hair and said each word with heart-wrenching words:
"I see clearly, it is etiquette that you are trying to escape from... Or me."
