My Cousin Loves Me

Readers who have been waiting for the story to build up can come back now. The blurbs for my upcoming novels, "Qingmei Nong" and "Qie Huan," are at the very bottom. Take your pick!

Nan Qi lost her mother when she was very young. Her shameless father made his concubine his principal wife, and her half-sister became her elder sister in name and status.

Nan Qi had to rely on her sister's favor to get by. She wore her sister's castoffs and used whatever her sister had left over.

Though she was the legitimate daughter, she lived worse than the servants. As the days passed, dark thoughts took root and grew wild, hidden beneath her innocent, pitiful facade.

When she came of age, she blossomed into a dazzling beauty, her bewitching charms impossible to conceal. Her shameless father was persuaded by his wife to send her to the capital. He intended to place her in the household of a third-rank official: a bald man over fifty, fat and fond of unsavory pursuits.

Nan Qi smiled and clenched her fist. If she was going to climb to the top, why not choose a branch that would leave everyone else kneeling at her feet?

Taking advantage of her stay in the capital, she set her sights on the second young master of the Lanling Xiao clan, a man with great power and a face that had countless young women besotted.

With each soft, delicate call of "Cousin," with the tears glistening at the corners of her reddened eyes, with the graceful sway of her slender waist as she danced beneath the moon, Xiao Yan became convinced that this woman loved him desperately enough to risk her life by jumping into the water to save him.

If that was the case, he might as well marry her.

Only later did he learn that she loved his money and his power, and would risk her life to get them.

The jade hairpin that Xiao Yan had given her as a token of their love shattered in his hand. Her endless lies still rang in his ears. When he closed his eyes, he saw Nan Qi weeping like a pear blossom in the rain: "Brother Yan, Nan Qi... Nan Qi loves you."

He raised a hand to her cheek, a dark smile curving his gentle features. What she did not know was that every tearful plea had been a trap he laid to lure her into his arms.

[I'll stand up for you and give you a lifetime of splendor]

[A bewitching, scheming heroine and a cold, deranged young nobleman]

A melodramatic Mary Sue story. The heroine is breathtakingly beautiful. If that's not your thing, don't read.

--------Upcoming Novel 1, "Qingmei Nong," please add it to your reading list:

A Fu lost her parents when she was little and was taken in by her uncle's family, where her aunt mistreated her. Though still young, she was already a glimpse of a peerless beauty. Her aunt only had to wait for the right moment to arrange a marriage and secure a life of wealth.

But when A Fu was eleven, the Xie family of the Marquis of Pingxi's residence in the capital came to take her away. She had everything she could need, and Madam Xie, her mother's close friend, treated her well.

Her cousin, Xie Yun, was always stern and taciturn. When she finally worked up the courage to call him "Cousin Yun" in a soft voice, all she got in return was his solemn gaze and an indifferent hum.

Thinking he disliked her, she hid from him whenever she saw him.

Then, in the year she came of age, she was performing the Zhezhi dance at a waterside pavilion when she happened to glimpse him leaning against the covered walkway, one leg propped up. His usually cool face seemed contorted with madness, and he watched her with a dark, brooding gaze.

A Fu was so startled that she twisted her ankle. Her cousin lifted her into his arms to examine the injury, then gave her a pair of jade shoes that would nourish her health.

So she had misunderstood her cousin all along.

She was too naive to understand what that look meant for her.

From then on, she fell deeper, step by step, until there was no way out.

-----Upcoming Novel 2, "Qie Huan," please add it to your reading list:

Song Jianing was as delicate as jade and beautiful enough to outshine the world. Unfortunately, she was born unlucky. A peasant girl, she was sold to the Pei household by her cruel parents, who tricked her into believing that a nobleman had asked for her hand in marriage.

Sitting in the carriage, she was both nervous and excited, convinced that a life of fine clothes and fine food was just around the corner.

A woman who is formally courted becomes a wife; one who is eloped with becomes a concubine. She did not know that, and always assumed the young master truly liked her. After all, she was so beautiful. Before her was the young master's handsome, pale chin, and a gaze whose meaning she could not fathom.

She was always pestering the young master, asking when he would marry her. "A Ning, be good," he would say, evading the question and simply telling her to behave.

She waited and waited, only to receive a cup of poisoned wine that took her life. Before she died, she even heard someone sneer, "Song Jianing is just a peasant girl, and she actually thinks she can marry the young master? What a ridiculous fantasy."

Pain shot through her guts, and she jolted awake in fright, only to find the young master lying beside her.

A Ning was at a loss for tears.

Everything in the dream had felt so real. There was no point in having wealth and glory if she did not live to enjoy them. She stopped asking the young master to marry her and tried every trick she could think of to persuade him to set her free.

The more silver he rewarded her with, the more successfully she seemed to fool him, yet the closer he got to her.

She gritted her teeth, gathered her courage, and stood tall as she slapped the silver onto the table in front of him. "I want to buy my freedom!" The arrogant young master crushed the brush in his hand. Shadows darkened his eyes as he clenched his teeth and spat out, "In your dreams."

Pei Shaoxuan had been saddled with a lovely young woman, and every day he watched her use clumsy, amateurish tricks to try to seduce people.

Her thoughts were written all over her face. She might be a fool, but she had the looks of a femme fatale. One day, after a nap, she seemed to have become a different person. She gazed at him timidly with her foxlike eyes.

When he asked why, she simply said that she had finally understood her place.

He did not care, assuming she had merely gotten smarter and come up with a new trick.

But one day the rabbit showed her claws. She plotted with her maid to run off with the poor scholar who lived at the east end of the village. She even exchanged all the gifts she had received for silver so she could buy her freedom.

He laughed in fury! So when she said she understood her place, she meant to abandon him and go find that pale-faced scholar with not an ounce of flesh on his bones.

[I took you seriously, but you left me]

[You tricked me, so you have to keep tricking me for the rest of your life]

Reader's guide:

1. The male lead did not cause the heroine's death in her dream.

2. A beautiful fool who thinks she's cunning #A cold, abstinent young nobleman who is actually narcissistic and makes things up in his head (he successfully won himself over)

3. Generally feel-good and satisfying. A tiny spoiler: A Ning is not a peasant girl.

Theme: If you love someone, take the initiative