Reborn After Getting Caught in a Secret Affair Without a Matchmaker

[Important! This is an unconventional series about a couple who break up and reunite, with both leads reborn. The breakup and bad ending in their previous life take up about 90,000 words, including the perspective of the day they are reborn. You can read it as a 100,000-word novella.]

[I've discussed ending the paid version of this story with my editor. There's still a long way to go, and A Jiao and Xiao Chi have a beautiful future ahead. If there's a chance, I'll try to finish the story.]

* Xie Mingqiong's elder sister is the empress, her older brother is a mighty general on the battlefield, her father holds the post of Left Chancellor, and her maternal family is an illustrious clan.

Her mother often told her, "One day, you'll be the mistress of a noble household. Your words and manners must be dignified and composed, and you must always be strict with yourself."

Xie Mingqiong should have obediently replied that she understood, but she pressed her lips together and couldn't say it.

At seventeen, she was ambushed at a banquet, and she and Chi Qing'en, without a matchmaker's blessing, entered into an illicit affair that continued in secret for years.

Chi Qing'en was the second son born to a concubine in the Marquis of Pingnan's household, which stood just across a wall from the Left Chancellor's residence.

He had a beautiful face and a pair of flirtatious peach-blossom eyes, and spent his days carousing. Her father despised him as a debauched, worthless playboy.

He never asked to marry her, and she never said she would marry him. Then their affair was exposed, and they parted ways for good.

Later, she was reborn...

Xie Mingqiong propped herself up on one elbow and gently traced the handsome brows of the man beside her, the bridge of his nose, then his thin, unfeeling lips.

She sighed, thinking: Having learned my lesson in my last life, I can't foolishly sit around hoping he'll come to ask for my hand again.

*

Just across the wall, the Left Chancellor's residence was decorated with red silk, and a large red "double happiness" character was pasted on the gate. Gongs and drums rang out as the youngest daughter of the Chancellor's family was married off.

A striking young man in a red robe stood high above, his dark, melancholy peach-blossom eyes fixed on the bridal sedan chair waiting at the gate. He remembered the morning she had stopped him as he was leaving.

"Don't climb over my family's wall again."

"I want to get married. Let's end things here."

She thinks she can end things in this life just because she wants to?

It's not that easy.

"Reader's Guide"

1. The author is a beginner.

2. First love for both leads. Both are each other's first. No warnings.

Theme: Independence, free love, love like a blazing fire.