Not a Stepmom, but a Wife

Please check out and add my upcoming novel, "After the Honest Straight Guy Gets Entangled with a Young Man from Miaojiang"~ Please, please!

Chen Nian lost his mother at fourteen. One day, on his way home, the young master ran into the new lover his deadbeat father had found.

He hadn't thought much of Bai Shenghan until he happened to see him wrapped in a trench coat beneath the neon lights.

He took a closer look.

Wasn't this the new sweetheart his shameless father had brought home?

Chen Nian thought it would be fun. Like father, like son. Just to annoy his dad, he leaned in, bit the man's ear, and whispered, "Stepmom."

"Is my dad not good enough for you? Out looking for someone else to play with again?"

He thought the man had no shame, but then his eyes reddened. His slender, beautiful body swayed, yet he didn't crumple.

Chen Nian thought he looked like a rabbit.

The new transfer student at his university was known as an aloof beauty. Chen Nian never imagined that the student would be Bai Shenghan.

Perhaps out of pride, the first time Bai Shenghan saw Chen Nian, he looked like a rabbit backed into a corner and warned him again and again not to say anything.

Chen Nian found it amusing and pestered him, demanding to know why he had stayed in the red-light district and why he had run away when he saw him.

Bai Shenghan wouldn't answer, so Chen Nian cornered him and teased him maliciously:

"If you don't want me to tell anyone, then you can please me. Bai Shenghan, date me."

He had planned to toss him aside once he got bored, but the more time they spent together, the more he realized how wonderful Bai Shenghan was.

Holding the soft-furred rabbit in his arms warmed him, and the proud peacock lowered his head for him.

-

Bai Shenghan kept a little ledger recording all the expenses Chen Nian covered for him. He didn't want to become a dodder vine dependent on someone else, so he kept track of everything, even when they were lovers.

One day, Chen Nian accidentally found it.

He was already insecure about whether his lover would stay, and with his deadbeat father gravely ill and rivals everywhere, he felt overwhelmed with anxiety.

Bai Shenghan was light as a feather, like a blade of grass that could take root and flourish wherever he went.

But Chen Nian couldn't live without him.

So he cut off Bai Shenghan's social connections, made him quit his part-time job, and used the cruelest methods to keep him by his side, slowly grinding away at the two of them in the midst of their passionate love.

The wild grass withered quickly, fading in the confines of its cage.

Chen Nian only thought that he had finally managed to hold on to his Shenghan forever.

Until one day, Bai Shenghan finally broke free of his restraints and calmly asked to break up.

The emptiness of losing him came rushing in, and Chen Nian finally woke up to how absurd his past behavior had been.

So he begged and pleaded, trying every possible way to offer up his still-beating heart.

All just to win back a little love.

"Bai Shenghan, don't leave. Please, love me."

He offered a kiss born of despair.

Mutual salvation, a light "chase your wife to the crematorium" arc, two beautiful and tragic leads, pseudo-coercion

Cool, reserved rabbit-like beauty bottom x Wild-at-heart, flirtatious peacock top who reforms

"In the long night, you are my only light."

Original title: "Absolutely Enraptured"

Content warnings:

1. The top is not a virgin. There is a mild "chase your wife to the crematorium" arc, and the top has some emotional insensitivity and crazed tendencies.

2. The top is very flirtatious at first, but becomes well-behaved after reforming.

3. The bottom is not really the top's stepmother. The top's father has been providing long-term financial aid to him.

4. The story takes a while to get going, but it shouldn't be frustrating. The early chapters lean toward the top's perspective, while the later chapters include some of the bottom's perspective to move the plot along.

5. Features of classic melodramatic romance novels.

*

"After the Honest Straight Guy Gets Entangled with a Young Man from Miaojiang"

[It's started, boss! Come take a look. I'll give you two to ship (╥ω╥`)]

Fang Mo is a straight guy who's a pushover to the very end. He's also terminally ill, unable to live and unable to die.

With nowhere else to turn, he goes to Miaojiang in search of a chance to survive. His luck is terrible: his travel money is stolen, his phone is stolen, and he nearly dies in the miasma-shrouded woods near a village of gu practitioners.

Fortunately, Heaven doesn't want him dead. It sends a gentle-eyed young man to save him.

The young man's name is Yan Nanchun. Like a ray of warm sunlight suddenly shining through the miasma-filled forest, he finds Fang Mo doctors and medicine and takes care of him in every way. He's simply perfect.

Fang Mo can't help thinking, What a good person. Though he does look at me a little strangely.

When his illness improves and he wants to go home for treatment, the darkness and obsession concealed beneath the young man's warmth are laid bare.

Deep in the rainy night, the miasma churns.

The young man coils around him like a serpent, locking his wrist in a tight grip. He caresses the faint vermilion mark that has appeared at Fang Mo's waist, then presses a soft kiss to it.

He sounds wounded and pitiful, his voice lingering and tender:

"Why are you running away? Is there something I haven't done well enough?"

"Brother A-Mo..."

The Miao people have a love gu called Heartbound.

This gu is born from obsession. It links two hearts and connects their pain. It can cure chronic illnesses and neutralize every poison.

Once the gu takes hold, the two are bound in life and death, and their hearts become one.

From then on, they cannot flee even to the ends of the earth, nor escape by crossing mountains and seas.

They will be entangled until death, bound together for life.

-

Yan Nanchun's life had never known spring.

He was born in the depths of winter, when a rare heavy snowfall blanketed the village. His mother was unmarried when she became pregnant and died soon after giving birth to him. From childhood, his people regarded him as an ill omen and a monster, keeping their distance in fear.

They resented him and named him "Nanchun," meaning "spring is hard to come by." But because of his unusual fate, they had no choice but to raise him and train him to protect the village.

He held a position of authority, yet stood alone.

His heart was lonely, and every year was cold.

Until Fang Mo barged into his endless winter.

He planted Heartbound in one heart, obsessively going it alone. In the end, they both surrendered their hearts, staying together for the rest of their lives.

Later, they left the isolated village and returned to a small city in the south.

That night, beneath a lovely moon, Fang Mo gently brushed his fingers over Yan Nanchun's brows and eyes.

He said, "The name Nanchun sounds too bleak. How about changing it to Nanchun, meaning 'southern spring'?"

Yan Nanchun froze for a moment, then nodded and said yes.

From then on, the south was always warm, and every year brought spring.

At last, the long years ahead of him had welcomed a spring unlike any other.

*

Yan Nanchun keeps a spirit snake named Niannian coiled around his wrist and carries a box of sweets, sticking close to Fang Mo.

Fang Mo can't help sighing. "What exactly do you want?"

The young man bites down on a piece of candy and lowers his head to kiss him. "I want to stay with Brother A-Mo, heart to heart, never apart and never betraying each other."

1. A nontraditional take on my kind of coercive romance. Love comes before coercion. Is it even coercion?

2. The puppy top is a top, and the mad-dog top is also a top. The honest straight guy gets thoroughly devoured.

3. Mutual devotion, mutual salvation, happy ending, with a touch of tragic love and bitter resentment.

4. Semi-fictional setting, with a few researched details. This is entirely my own take on Miao villages and may mix in characteristics from other ethnic groups. Think of it as a gu village where different groups live together.

5. The bottom has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The gu cures him, but there are some descriptions of frailty, with a little in the later story.

Theme: Love is not about domineering control and possession.