Those Years with My Late Wife

[Little Sun × Gloomy Cynic]

Male Lead’s Version:

When the provincial exam results were posted, Ming Xuelan took first place on the laureate list. People were eagerly trying to find husbands among the successful candidates, and he was nearly drowned in flowers and pink handkerchiefs.

Ming Xuelan struggled through the crowd. “Please make way. My wife is waiting for me at home.”

Everyone slapped their thighs and pounded their fists in regret. “What a pity!”

Before long, everyone in Lingqing City knew that the newly crowned provincial laureate and his wife, Xin Lan’er, had been childhood sweethearts: a perfect match, with talents and beauty to spare, and a marriage as harmonious as music.

Later, Ming Xuelan held their newborn as he saw his wife off at her funeral. Not long afterward, he remarried, taking as his wife the most esteemed princess in the realm.

And later still, his wife, who had been dead for years, came back.

Female Lead’s Version:

After Xin Lan’er died, Ming Xuelan appeared at her funeral with their child in his arms.

The baby wasn’t even a month old and cried nonstop, frightened by the blare of the suona. Those around them couldn’t bear to watch and urged Ming Xuelan to take the child away. He ignored them, staring expressionlessly as the baby cried.

He didn’t care for the child at all. He wouldn’t even hire a wet nurse, and the baby often wailed from hunger.

He stayed away from home all day, caring nothing for the child’s life or death. All he wanted was to marry the princess as soon as possible, become an imperial relative, and rise to wealth and power.

That was what Xin Lan’er’s older brother told her.

She didn’t believe him, but she also felt her brother wouldn’t lie to her.

At last, she got the chance to ask Ming Xuelan, “Is everything my brother said true?”

Ming Xuelan was leaning over her shoulder then, breathing in the sweet scent of her neck. At her question, he replied, “Do you believe him?”

She fell silent. After a long while, she said, “My brother wouldn’t lie to me.”

He sneered and got out of bed. “Then believe him.”

She grabbed him. “I want to hear the truth.”

He couldn’t tell her.

Was he supposed to tell her that her brother, like him, dreamed of having her?

///

Xin Lan’er was very satisfied with her life.

She earned money every day, her husband was the childhood sweetheart she had grown up with, and her mother-in-law treated her like her own daughter.

Her only family, her older brother, treasured her more than his own life.

Her only worry was that her husband and brother didn’t get along.

Whenever the three of them were together, her husband always looked displeased. He would inexplicably get angry with her, then make things difficult for her in bed.

She truly couldn’t understand why.

Only after dying once did she learn the truth: her brother wasn’t really her brother, and he had loved her since they were children.

Her husband was jealous.

Reading Guide:

The leads are exclusive to each other, with a forced-possession plotline.

The main characters are not perfect.

An imagined historical setting, so please don’t nitpick the details.

The female lead and her older brother are not related by blood, and there is no mutual romance between them.

### The next book is The Face of Misty Peach Blossoms, a story about this novel’s leads’ child. Please come check it out! ~~

Theme: Love endures forever