Winning Your Heart

(My new novel, "The Female Side Character Marries a Male Bodhisattva and Devotes Herself to Self-Destruction", is currently serializing. Come check it out!)

Synopsis:

Wanshu had reached the age for marriage. Her mother, Madam Chu, carefully considered several suitable young men and showed her their portraits.

Blushing, Wanshu chose one.

Madam Chu said approvingly, “The Meng family is very strict with their children. Jing is close with your brother, and he’s always been virtuous and mild-mannered...”

Before long, a matchmaker came calling, and the marriage was nearly settled when Wanshu had a nightmare.

In her dream, Meng Jing set himself on fire for the woman he loved.

He said, “Wanshu, I’ve wronged you. Go in peace. Yan’er and I will raise our child well.”

After Wanshu told her brother about it, he discovered that Meng Jing was keeping a mistress named Li Yan’er. The match was called off.

From then on, whenever Wanshu met a potential suitor, she would dream that the man had some objectionable habit she disliked. Every time, investigation proved the dreams true.

Wanshu was both delighted and distressed. She was glad to have avoided so many disastrous matches, but worried that she might never get married.

One day, Huaiyu knelt at her feet and confessed his feelings. Only then did Wanshu learn that her usually well-behaved, proper cousin had such feelings for her.

But she had always thought of Huaiyu as a younger brother. How could she possibly accept him?

*

Chu Huaiyu lost his father when he was young. After his mother remarried, his stepbrother often abused him, while his mother told him to endure it.

He couldn’t endure it, so he learned to make incense and ruined his stepbrother’s legs.

Not long afterward, his mother died of illness. He escaped from his stepfather and became a rat in the gutter.

He learned how to disguise himself, especially in front of the Gu family, who had kindly taken him in. He presented himself as gentle and harmless.

Then he learned that Wanshu was about to become engaged to someone else. For the first time, he used despicable methods in the Gu household.

He lured Wanshu into a “dream” with incense, easily ruining the engagement.

Later, he finally got what he wanted.

On their wedding night, he traced her brows, eyes, lips, and every inch of her body, murmuring in a lovesick haze, “Mine, mine, all mine...”

He wanted his dear older sister to belong to no one else, in body and in heart.

With the faint scent of incense drifting through the air, Wanshu felt as though she had been trapped in a preposterous, shameful dream, one that frightened and ensnared her.

From then on, she no longer dared to think of Huaiyu as a younger brother.

Theme: Love someone as you would tend a flower.