When Ying Zhixu was nine, she was sent to live with the Pei family.
In a glass greenhouse filled with flourishing roses, a young man stood straight and proud, his profile cool and detached. Her parents took her hand and gently urged her, "Get along with your brother. Once everything is over, we'll come take you home."
Ying Zhixu nodded, still too young to understand.
Only later did she realize that "get along with him" meant "please him."
She was a pawn in her family, first sent to his side, and later, into his bed.
Ying Zhixu went along with it, treating him as a ladder to climb toward success. They each got what they wanted, until Pei Hanqing handed her a marriage contract, along with an exquisitely crafted ring he had apparently prepared some time ago.
He said casually, "Sign it if you have no objections."
Ying Zhixu: "?"
[The aloof, noble young master × the beautiful, uncaring, sweet-on-the-outside schemer]
Three years after faking her death, Ying Zhixu is thriving under a new identity.
In a foreign town, she enjoys the freedom and comfort of her second life, having so much fun she loses herself in it. Then one night, after drinking, she returns home and runs into a figure outside her door.
Pei Hanqing stands there in a perfectly tailored suit, elegant and composed, his refined bearing and striking presence utterly out of place here.
Ying Zhixu stops in her tracks.
He smiles faintly and looks down at her. "Aren't you going in?"
*Faked death + coercive love + a little step-sibling romance
*The long courtship is from the male lead's perspective. From the female lead's perspective, he was just a bedmate.
*The aloof, noble young master becomes a brooding ghost after being used and abandoned.
*Childhood sweethearts, but various circumstances turn it into a possessive romance
23.12.29
Theme: She isn't unhappy. She just wants to be free.
