The first time they saw each other in years.
In the dim room, a man's fingers toyed with her.
"Tell me, how did my brother touch you?"
A recommendation ^^
[Ongoing: Snowfall in Spring (Rekindled Love)]
Highlights:
[Both leads are chaste]
[No bride substitution, no revenge]
[The story's main focus is family support, not just romance]
Thanks for reading. Please add it to your collection!
Zhan Yanru was a girl her father didn't want and her mother didn't love.
By chance, when she was still naive and sheltered, she met a refined young gentleman who was willing to treat her like a princess. She knew little about him, only that his name was Zheng Jingcheng, that he was courteous and proper, and that he kept himself pure.
She thought of him as a clear stream on a snowy mountain, untouched by a speck of dust. He was like a solitary crane in the heavens, bright as the moon, visible but beyond reach.
But on the day Zheng Jingcheng sent her his betrothal papers, she hurt him terribly.
That year, she was sixteen and he was nineteen.
She was preparing to marry.
He was beginning his official career.
-
Years later, Zheng Jingcheng had risen to high office and noble rank, a favored talent of the emperor.
Yet he remained uninterested in marriage. Even when the emperor arranged a match for him, he treated it as a mere formality.
On the second day of his wedding, he firmly told his parents, "Once the wedding period is over, I'll divorce my new wife on the grounds that we have no children."
His parents tried to dissuade him, but to no avail. At last, they accepted his decision.
Little did he know that the moment his new bride stepped inside, his heart, hard as a rock, would suddenly lurch, making him drop his teacup.
A man who had never known defeat suddenly lost his usual composure.
Because he had never dreamed that his new bride would be the woman he had always cherished!
-
The two tacitly kept their distance.
But little by little, Zheng Jingcheng was caught off guard when Zhan Yanru suddenly confessed to him, then secretly flirted with him in the middle of the night.
She kept him at arm's length, stirring the long-sealed heart of the proper gentleman until it rose and fell, swayed and shook.
Until one day, Zheng Jingcheng saw his wife release a love lantern with another man, while his parents excitedly told him that the emperor had agreed to their separation.
That night, candlelight had just begun to glow behind the window.
Zhan Yanru had slipped out of her silky underclothes and was looking for a thick robe to wear out. Hearing the beaded curtain clatter behind her, she told her maid, "Go ask if my husband is asleep. I want to borrow half an incense stick of his time."
The maid did not answer. Only footsteps drew closer.
"Then may I borrow a whole night from my wife?"
She turned around in shock, only to find that the proper gentleman had snuck into her bedroom.
(Not a bride-substitution plot. Romance and plot are equally important. Content warnings are at the end of Chapter One.)
Theme: Pay back what you owe, in kind.
