Kind, sensitive, and unwilling to accept her fate, the widowed sister-in-law vs. her upright scholar brother-in-law
The heroine is not a virgin, while the hero is. He's been in love with her for years, and she realizes her feelings late.
Blurb:
He Xingzhi is gentle, handsome, and refined. He passed the provincial examination at just nineteen, with a bright future ahead of him.
Everyone said that poor Wutong Alley was about to produce a promising young man. Just like in a storybook, he would marry the daughter of a high-ranking official, enter the world of politics, and rise to success.
But no one knew that, in the middle of the night, he murmured the name of someone he could never admit to loving.
Jiang Lanyun, his sister-in-law, who had only recently become a widow, and the girl next door he'd loved since he was thirteen.
When he was sixteen, he shielded her with his body. His elder brother beat him like a madman, and though he was badly hurt, he still forced a smile onto his youthful, handsome face to comfort her. "Don't be afraid, sister-in-law."
That day, they breathed against each other, their skin touching. That night, he went home and had a wicked dream.
After his elder brother died, he forcibly suppressed his desires and urged his widowed sister-in-law to remarry. But Jiang Lanyun refused, choosing to remain a widow in the He family for the rest of her life.
If she was willing to spend her life as a daughter-in-law of the He family, why couldn't she be He Xingzhi's wife?
The only problem was, he didn't know how to make her stop seeing him as a younger brother.
An accident left his sister-in-law with amnesia.
When she woke, her eyes were as bright as they had been years ago. Hearing his younger sister call him Second Brother and address her as sister-in-law, she looked at him with curious, limpid eyes. "Are you my husband?"
His heart pounded. Under his younger sister's bewildered gaze, he answered, "Yes, Lanyun. I'm your husband."
Later, between the bed curtains, Jiang Lanyun was still trembling with fear. He tenderly kissed each of her scars and softly reassured her. "Don't be afraid, Lanyun."
[Reading Guide]
1. The heroine is not a virgin, while the hero is. Before her former husband died, the hero loved her from afar. The leads never crossed the line while she was still married. Their romance begins after her former husband's death.
2. Neither lead is perfect, but I think this will be a warm story about two people healing each other.
3. Fictional setting modeled after the Northern Song dynasty, with a three-year age gap.
4. The former husband dies at the start. Events from before that will be shown in flashbacks.
Theme: Love life and stay positive
