Second Brother

[I made it to the final round of a competition I entered earlier, so I'll be preparing for it over the next few days and might not update regularly. I'm sorry, but I won't abandon the story and will make sure to finish it. I'll be back after the competition.]

At seventeen, Su Fusang finally learned that she was the daughter of the Su family who had been lost outside the household.

She went from being a country girl to a young lady.

The Su family was wealthy and prosperous.

But Su Fusang didn't belong there.

Her birth mother cared more about appearances than her, her father valued profit over family, her older brother thought she was hopelessly stupid, and her younger brother thought she was ugly.

In contrast, there were Wei Mingyun and Wei Mingxi, who lived in the residence.

One was the favored disciple of a great Confucian academy, and the other was a talented woman renowned throughout the capital.

Everyone loved them.

Su Fusang should have hated them.

She should have hated them for taking all the love and leaving her an outsider.

But in the courtyard where even the moonlight could not reach, only Wei Mingxi's clear glow was willing to enter.

At night, he would hold Su Fusang in his arms as she curled up on the chaise longue. Outside the window, the flowers could not withstand the rain and fell in scattered petals. Inside, the candlelight flickered, and spring's desire stirred the air.

The only happiness Su Fusang had was something Wei Mingxi coveted.

This frenzied, tender, and blissful love made Su Fusang believe that Wei Mingxi must love her deeply.

But on the eve of their engagement,

Su Fusang did not wait for Wei Mingxi. What arrived instead was a cup of poison.

She thought, It was always going to be this way.

If even her own family didn't love her, how could Wei Mingxi love her?

She drank the poison and died at twenty.

News of her death did not reach the Su family or Wei Mingxi until three days later.

Wei Mingxi couldn't understand.

Su Fusang had endured more than ten years of hardship. Why couldn't she make it through just one more night?

But his grief lasted only an instant.

He did not love her. He had agreed to their engagement only to repay the Su family's kindness.

Calm and composed, he walked into the courtyard and pushed open the gate he had opened countless times before.

Only this time, no one came out to greet him.

There was only a cold corpse, proof that she had already died.

A piece of Wei Mingxi's calm heart suddenly crumbled.

For the next three years, he dreamed each night of that open gate.

* The female lead only fakes her death.

* The male lead and female lead are not related at all. The male lead was only adopted. He leaves the Su family around chapter 16. The two will not enter a romantic relationship or become intimate before their lack of blood relation is clearly established.

* Anyone who bullied the female lead will face a ten-level reckoning. They will suffer terribly.

* I want to write a melodramatic story of love and hate, of missing someone a thousand times and resenting them a thousand times.

Theme: Life is precious