The Right Way to Seduce Your Aloof Cousin

[Temporarily on hiatus to prepare for exams. Return date unknown, but it will be completed. I've been writing in my spare time and will post the updates I've saved up when I return.

I'm drowning in public service exam prep and teacher qualification exams. Feels like I'm not far from ascending to heaven 😇😴]

Coming soon: Before Returning to My Childhood Friend Husband's House to Share His Two Households. Blurb below~

Blurb for this story:

|Scheming, attention-seeking green-tea little cousin x ruthless, powerful older male cousin

When Murong Chi took her in, Pei Yueying was seven years old. She had no family to rely on, nowhere to go, and no way to turn back.

He taught her to read and write, play the zither, and paint, carefully raising her for years. Then he personally fed her a pill of sugar that could poison its way through her entrails.

It was as sweet as the one she'd eaten the first time she met him.

Murong Chi smiled gently. “You won't disappoint me, will you?”

Pei Yueying lay across his knees in silence for a long while. In the end, she nodded.

Even if he meant to send her to another man's side.

She could do it.

//

Lu Xun, heir to the Duke of Dingguo, had a merciful-looking face and peerless beauty. In the capital, he was a man of untouchable status. He had risen to a high office at a young age, with a limitless future ahead of him, yet he was utterly ruthless and cold-blooded. Many trembled at the mere sight of him.

Pei Yueying transformed overnight into his younger cousin.

On her first night back at the Duke's manor with Lu Xun, Pei Yueying, tears streaming down her face, knocked on his firmly shut door.

“Brother, I'm so scared...”

Her thin clothes clung to his burning, solid chest. The man pushed her away coldly, his bearing aloof and immaculate. “Men and women should keep their distance, Lady Pei. Please conduct yourself with propriety.”

In her third month at the Duke's manor, Yueying was copying scriptures when sleepiness washed over her.

Her eyelids drooped, and she leaned to one side, pretending to be delicate as she rested against Lu Xun.

Lu Xun's gaze remained impassive. He turned a page of his military treatise and sat motionless for two hours.

On some uncounted day of her stay at the Duke's manor, Yueying angrily decided that he truly was a cold-faced devil. At a banquet, she secretly hooked her leg around his one last time, unwilling to give up.

Once, then twice.

His large hand gripped her ankle tightly, then gently caressed it. Yueying looked up in astonishment and met the man's cold, deep gaze, as if he could swallow her whole.

She could read his lips.

“...Liar.”

//

Pei Yueying was seducing him.

It wasn't the first time Lu Xun had realized this. From the first moment he met her, he knew she had bad intentions and was plotting something.

He watched her clumsy tricks and lies that would fall apart at the slightest poke, his gaze lingering on her slender neck. So fragile, he thought. It would take only the slightest twist

Until that soft body pressed tightly against him.

Lu Xun suddenly found something rather amusing in the way she tried to please people.

He only wanted to see what other tricks she could come up with. Lu Xun allowed her to stand by his side, get close to him, even grow intimate with him.

He was perfectly clear-headed.

He would never get in too deep.

-

-

At first, Murong Chi only wanted to watch that person lose all her dignity and sink forever into the mire.

Later, he watched her sink deeper and deeper, but felt none of the joy he should have.

With night rain approaching, he suddenly remembered a moonlit night many years ago. She had leaned against him and said softly, “Brother, I belong only to you.”

He woke from the dream to empty silence. Only the rain fell like threads, lingering and endless.

He regretted it.

#A usually level-headed man loses his heart one day and goes completely mad

#So what if she lied to me? It's enough that she has me in her heart

|The scheming green-tea little cousin has ulterior motives, but not for her older male cousin, and so the ruthless older cousin completely loses it|Second male lead's regretful pursuit | Both are virgins

For content warnings, see the author's note in Chapter One ☃️

Coming soon: Before Returning to My Childhood Friend Husband's House to Share His Two Households

The Eldest and Second Branches of the Duke of Qingguo's family held their weddings on the same day. Two bridal sedans, accompanied by music and fanfare, were carried into the duke's manor.

The man Liu Shanning was to marry was her childhood friend. Before their wedding, he had blushed as he promised never to take a concubine. With his elder brother and sister-in-law above them, she wouldn't need to manage the household, and with the duke's family fortune, the two of them could simply enjoy their own carefree life.

At night, when she lifted her veil, she saw a face both familiar and strange.

It was her husband's elder cousin, Cui Shao, a born hero since childhood and the mighty General Zhenyuan.

The man she had most respected and feared as a child had accidentally lifted her veil.

-

In their previous life, the elder cousin died in battle in the second year of Liu Shanning's marriage to Cui Yu, leaving his widowed sister-in-law utterly alone.

His uncle and aunt begged through their tears for him to marry into both branches of the family and provide an heir for the eldest branch.

Cui Yu was unwilling at first.

He had not agreed, but Liu Shanning still had a huge fight with him. While drunk, he somehow ended up in his widowed sister-in-law's room.

After that, Liu Shanning never gave him a kind look again.

He begged her day after day to forgive him, but all he got in return was endless mockery and scorn.

Gradually, without realizing it, he began comparing his sister-in-law with her.

His sister-in-law was gentle and virtuous, while Liu Shanning was spoiled and willful.

His sister-in-law managed the household and kept the family estate in perfect order, while Liu Shanning only knew how to play and enjoy herself, never understanding the troubles weighing on his heart.

His sister-in-law would make a better wife than she could.

And yet he still loved Liu Shanning.

So when he was reborn, he switched the bridal sedans. After his elder cousin died, he could still marry into both branches, and Liu Shanning would remain his wife.

But some things seemed to have changed.

Behind the lush flowers and trees, his childhood sweetheart blushed and rose on tiptoe to kiss someone else.

And his elder cousin, usually solemn and distant, drew her familiarly and affectionately into his arms and coaxed her. “Remember. A feast at Yunxiang House, new clothes from Xianming Residence, horseback riding on my day off. What else do you want?”

Cui Yu thought that as long as his elder cousin died just as he had in his previous life, everything could return to normal.

But as the days went by, his elder cousin grew healthier by the day, and his childhood sweetheart's belly grew bigger and bigger.

His elder cousin took Liu Shanning's hand and said to him, “Thank you for giving me a marriage.”

Seeing the faintly amused look in Liu Shanning's eyes, Cui Yu finally realized:

He wasn't the only one who had been reborn.

||

To Cui Shao, marriage was neither here nor there. A passionate marriage full of vows and declarations, like his younger cousin's, was one way to live; a quiet marriage of mutual respect, as he had imagined, was another.

Who would have thought that on the first night, after the bridal sedan was sent to the wrong place, Liu Shanning's crying would keep him awake all night?

On the second night, he laid a bedroll on the floor while Liu Shanning sobbed.

On the third day, dark circles under his eyes, he made three rules with her: They would be husband and wife in public, siblings in private, and nothing improper would happen between them.

Until one day, with spring willows hanging low and a gentle breeze on their faces, Liu Shanning waved her round fan and cast him a graceful, lighthearted glance.

The spring scenery couldn't match even half her radiance.

Cui Shao: To hell with brother-and-sister affection.

He would spend his life with Shanning, cherishing her and living in harmony.

In her previous life, the heroine was not a virgin, but the hero was. In this life, both are virgins; a marriage that turns into love. The sister-in-law is no rival, in either the past or the present.

Theme: Only by treating each other sincerely can we see the sincerity in another's heart.