(Cooking, period setting, 1v2, slice of life, marriage before love, forced love, age gap, soft-hearted heroine)
Lin Wanqing’s own father sold her to that man for five hundred yuan.
The man was called Lu Beiyao, the infamous local demon king, feared for his fearsome looks and even more fearsome reputation. They said that when he got angry, he’d chase someone for a mile with a knife. If a child cried at night, all the parents had to do was say, “Beiyao’s coming,” and the little one would dive straight under the covers.
On their wedding night, Lin Wanqing wept pitifully. “D-don’t come any closer…”
The man had just finished bathing. He came in bare-chested, his muscular body glowing a wheat-brown beneath the kerosene lamp. He glanced at the little pair of scissors in her hand, gave a scoff, and pulled her straight into his arms.
“Why are you crying? I’m not going to kill you.”
He gripped her impossibly slender waist in his big hand and furrowed his brow. She was so soft, so thin, as if she had no bones. How could she possibly take anything?
Later, the whole village waited to see her bullied until she tried to end it all, but instead they saw the once fearsome Lu Beiyao squatting by the stove in the dead of winter, making her brown sugar water and burning his fingers so badly he kept rubbing his ears.
The village gossips wagged their tongues. “Beiyao, your little wife is so delicate and cries all the time. Why don’t you put her in her place?”
Lu Beiyao ground his cigarette butt into the dirt and glared at them. “She’s my woman. I can’t get enough of taking care of her. What’s it to you?”
But once they were back in their room that night, he cornered her against the wall, brushing the tears from her face with his rough fingertips. His voice was so hoarse it barely sounded like his own.
“You cry, and my heart just melts.”
