Arrogant and Proud

The Ning and Pei families have been close for generations. In the eyes of the capital's elite, Ning Huanyi and Pei Shao have always fit the mold of a couple destined to marry: childhood friends who grew up together, supported each other through thick and thin, and would one day live in perfect harmony. Ning Huanyi always thought so, too. Until the year before their engagement, when the young general Lu Yue, fresh from a victorious campaign, was ambushed on the road and rescued by her on a mountain path. Suddenly, she wanted a different life. So she called off the informal marriage arrangement between their families and instead pursued Lu Yue with everything she had. Luckily, Pei Shao was hardly interested in marriage either. Scions of noble families were always so detached, impeccably so. He was easy to talk to, but... perhaps too easy. The two families agreed at once. Their friendship wasn't affected in the slightest. For the next five years, she and Pei Shao paid no attention to each other, while things with Lu Yue repeatedly went wrong. No longer the impetuous girl she had once been, she gradually began to realize she might have been blind. Then she heard people talking about Pei Shao. He was well past the usual age for marriage, yet still hadn't married or become engaged. Could it be that he still couldn't forget Ning Huanyi? She had nothing to say about that. But before long, word spread that Pei Shao was about to get engaged. His intended was the second daughter of a family just half a step below the Ning family in status. She was stunningly beautiful and gifted with words, and everyone praised them as a match made in heaven. At a banquet, Ning Huanyi ran into Pei Shao, who had been nowhere to be seen for a long time. He was as refined and aristocratic as ever, but now he seemed even more distant, and more powerful. Compared with Lu Yue, the man she had been foolish enough to fall for, five years later Ning Huanyi understood perfectly: when she was young, she hadn't known what was good for her. Pei Shao had always been the best man she'd ever met. Unfortunately, the gentle look in his eyes, the one only she had ever recognized, now belonged to another woman. Ning Huanyi realized she really was hopeless. Five years later, she had fallen for the man whose engagement she had once broken off. She berated herself, but couldn't stop sneaking closer to him. In the end, she lowered her haughty head... Huh? Why wouldn't it go down? Pei Shao was much too proper. -- Even getting revenge for the great wrong done to him in his youth hadn't brought Pei Shao as much satisfaction as Ning Huanyi approaching him again five years later, her eyes shining. Only he knew how much he had changed over those five years, from a refined and respectable young nobleman into someone sinister, hypocritical, ruthless, and cruel. It was all Ning Huanyi's fault. So... in this life, he would indulge her first. Indulgence would make her arrogant. In the next life, he would torment her. He had to make her experience the searing pain of watching someone proud fall from grace. In the next life, he'd turn her into a fish and fry her over and over in a pot. She was so beautiful that if she accidentally became a mermaid, he'd carve Pei Shaos into her heart a thousand times and rub it with chili water. As for this life... he'd just leave things as they were. Yeah. Pei Shao thought his plan was flawless. -- Lu Yue: So I'm out of the picture, huh? I like Huanyi too. You're the only one who's proper? Then I guess we should all experience that searing pain together. Theme: It's fine if Miss Ning isn't perfect. Someone else will be proper enough to make her perfect.