Drawing a Prison Around Yourself

When Yan Qiao was with Lu Jia, she loved watching him smile the most.

He was handsome, and his smile was even more beautiful.

But later, in a video her father showed her, she saw Lu Jia smiling as he told her father:

"Yan Qiao? She's nothing but a tool for me to get back at you."

With his most beautiful smile, he said the cruelest thing: "Your daughter is cheap."

For the first time, Yan Qiao found his smile unbearable to look at.

When she asked him to break up, he was still smiling. "Sure. I couldn't be happier."

Yan Qiao said nothing. In the end, she gave him one long look.

After that one look, the boy with the ice-cream smile was dead in her heart.

A few months after the breakup, Yan Qiao was startled one day when she returned to her home and saw a figure leaning against the door.

Under the light, she recognized him: Lu Jia.

He'd been drinking and looked utterly haggard. The moment he saw her, he rushed over without a thought and whispered in her ear again and again: "I miss you, Qiaoqiao. I miss you so much I'm going crazy..."

He knew she loved seeing him smile, so he tried his best to smile for her.

Yan Qiao only looked him over coldly, then finally gave her verdict: "Your smile is disgusting."

Lu Jia's plan, to get close to Yan Qiao, make her fall in love with him, and use her to get revenge on her father, went very smoothly. Yan Qiao really did fall for him, and he successfully took revenge on everyone. Just as he'd used her, Yan Qiao learned the truth and left him of her own accord. Everything had gone according to plan, but he couldn't bring himself to be happy.

Later, he lay awake night after night, unable to stop thinking about Yan Qiao. He even began spying on her life like a pervert. He discovered that Yan Qiao had long since escaped the shadow he'd cast over her. She no longer loved him, and she didn't even hate him anymore.

It was only then that he realized he was already in too deep.

The web of love he'd carefully woven for Yan Qiao had, in the end, become a cocoon that trapped him.

[If you're eager for a groveling redemption arc, check out the author's page for My Ex-Boyfriend Regrets It Every Day. It has several, especially in the first and third stories.]

A related series is now underway next door. Visit the author's page to find it: Crimson Forbidden Zone

1.

Ming Fei first met Yan Xixu on the third day after her parents' funeral.

She was brought to the Yan family mansion. A fourteen-year-old boy in a black turtleneck slowly descended the stairs.

Sunlight streamed through the glass, casting dappled shadows over him. He looked like a beautiful young man stepping out of an oil painting, noble and languid.

The boy stopped in front of her. "Ming Fei?"

"By our family seniority..."

"You should call me Uncle."

2.

Yan Xixu was famous in their circle for spoiling Ming Fei.

During the ten years she was fostered at the Yan home, the young girl poured all her feelings into her diary. Page after page, there were only three words: Yan Xixu.

One day after her confession was rejected, she got dead drunk and was brought home late at night by a male classmate with dyed blond hair.

Yan Xixu carried her back to her room, his face cold with anger.

After tossing her onto the bed, he leaned over with one hand braced on the edge. "Want to talk?"

They had a huge fight.

All her pent-up grievances burst out that day. She accused him of having no right to control her when he wasn't her boyfriend.

He frowned at her and, unexpectedly, agreed to date her.

3.

On their first date, while she was out changing, she came back to find him leaning against the glass corridor, letting a woman in front of him rise onto her toes to kiss him. When their eyes met, he raised an eyebrow casually, his peach-blossom eyes flirtatious and unfaithful.

As he wanted, she broke up with him. He remained nonchalant. "It should have ended this way from the start. I could never be with you. Anyone else is possible, just not you."

"Listen carefully, Feifei. I can only ever be your uncle. That will never change."

4.

After that, everything went just as he had hoped. Ming Fei gave up her fantasies about him and soon found a new boyfriend.

That day, she left the Yan residence with her arm affectionately linked through her boyfriend's, and passed Yan Xixu with a polite, distant, "Uncle."

It was from that day on that Yan Xixu changed completely.

5.

Yan Xixu had always been a mad dog. Ming Fei simply hadn't expected him to later resort to any means necessary to drive away both of her boyfriends, even going so far as to destroy himself to keep her.

But none of that had anything to do with her anymore.

She would never love him again.

[Upcoming redemption-arc novel: The Substitute Lover]

None of Yan Yuchen's friends failed to envy him. His new kept lover, Qin Yiren, looked just like his unreachable first love. And just as her name suggested, she was pleasing in every way: not only was she beautiful, she was also gentle and obedient.

Yan Yuchen didn't think much of it. "She's just a substitute. The best thing about her is that she listens."

They thought it was only natural for a kept lover to be obedient. They had originally assumed that no matter how well Qin Yiren treated Yan Yuchen, she was only after his money. But she was willing to risk her life to save him.

So they were convinced that Qin Yiren loved him desperately.

Even Yan Yuchen himself thought so.

She would whisper "Chencheng" in his ear again and again, telling him how much she loved him and how she couldn't live without him.

She liked to watch him quietly and didn't want him to speak. She said she liked him best when he was quiet.

She wrote him letters, but always addressed them to Yan Chen, leaving out the middle character.

He'd always thought it was just a mistake, until he was injured in a car accident and his face was hurt. The doctor, a friend of Yan Yuchen's, joked to Qin Yiren that Yan Yuchen had been disfigured.

Yan Yuchen was confident that even if he really were disfigured, Qin Yiren would still love him. Instead, she packed her things and left him that very night.

Ignoring the bandages on his face, he rushed to confront her. For the first time in her life, she frowned at him. "Your face is already gone. If you speak, you'll look even less like him."

Only later did Yan Yuchen learn that he had a younger half-brother, five years his junior, who had died in an accident a year ago. Qin Yiren had come to his side a month later.

His younger brother had looked almost exactly like him. His name was Yan Chen.

Theme: Take things in stride.