The Flower Claimed by the Bone-Sick One

After turning twenty, Lu Ya ended every page of his diary with the same sentence: Today, I missed you again.

Then Lu Ya died at twenty-five, leaving his former fake younger brother a generous inheritance and the key to a room.

Lu Ya left him an ethical question: In a story about an older brother falling in love with his younger brother, only to discover that the younger brother isn't actually his brother, is it immoral, or a narrow escape? It's a good question.

Lu Ya also left him the color of love: the story of a madman whose edges had long been worn away, who pretended to be normal all these years, then walked away after completing the Lu family's body-double assignment, only to regain the color of those lost edges years later through the death of his late older brother.

Fortunately, Jiang Yan was reborn. Let clarity and contradiction all begin again.

[Reborn fake young master, bottom: Hears four versions of himself giving testimony / clear-headed yet sinking into contradiction / claims to love no one / but absolutely won't let you break your promise alone]

[Crazy, irreverent older brother, top: Master of acting, hiding behind a mask as he falls / bears the truth and plays the pig to eat the tiger / an exceptionally good-natured victim who endures everything / What can you do with a younger brother like that? Just put up with him. O_o]

Both boys are poor little puppies, each with his own story.

[Happy ending. The bottom is only obsessive and a little yandere early on, and gets better later. He does not have multiple personalities. The voices of his so-called fragmented selves are hallucinations caused by illness.]

Former title: The Flower Exclusively Kept by Bone Disease. I wanted to write something that wasn't so beta, but people didn't like the title... so I had to change it.

Note:

The top is the child of the father and his former wife. Jiang Yan was adopted by his foster mother to serve as a sleeper agent.

They were never on the same household register. Neither by name nor by blood are they brothers, except that Jiang Yan occasionally calls him "big brother."

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Here's a Lunar New Year release announcement for my upcoming novel, His Fragile Little Glass Heart

[Prickly, fragile-hearted bottom x amnesiac, shameless, loyal wolfdog top] [My take on strange tales]

Plot summary:

Shi Yue has been blind since childhood, but not in the traditional sense. He can see too many things, and if he weren't blind, he would surely drive himself mad.

Before his master left, he said Shi Yue should either wrap his eyes in black cloth or wear sunglasses. But the sunglasses made him look like a street performer playing the erhu, so five-year-old Shi Yue politely declined.

But at nine, he took charge of the family with an iron fist, at the cost of being blindfolded for the rest of his life.

From then on, all of southern China knew that the Shi family had a Shi Yue, a master at fortune-telling, warding off evil, and reading feng shui, but unfortunately, he was blind.

Until one day, people discovered that Pei Xiao, who had come from Beiping, had become Shi Yue's honored guest. Pei Xiao was quite the figure himself, able to escort goods and identify antiques with ease. The two of them standing together looked just like the Black and White Shuangsha of the antiques world.

Later, some people challenged them and arranged an appraisal. But the two men huddled together and whispered:

Shi Yue: "It's fake. I heard it say it was made just last month."

Pei Xiao nodded too. "Fake. I saw the real thing in the palace hundreds of years ago. I accidentally smashed it ages ago."

Well, after all that, you two don't appraise antiques with expertise, you just rely on your natural gifts?!

Romance summary:

On a snowy night when he was destitute, Pei Xiao was taken in by a blind fortune-teller, who said his name was Shi Yue and that he would be Pei Xiao's future husband.

At first, Pei Xiao was certain Shi Yue was a fraud. He didn't believe in any so-called destined soulmate foretold by fortune-telling.

But then there were people turned into evil spirits by stones, people carrying coffins to worship the gods, the eyes beneath Shi Yue's blindfold, the glass souls the Shi family often spoke of, and Pei Xiao himself, who seemed to have lived for many, many years...

Strange things kept happening, and Pei Xiao gradually realized that Shi Yue's fortune-telling wasn't baseless after all. He also discovered that this little blind man, who seemed hard-mouthed and even harder-hearted, was actually fragile-hearted and could shatter at the slightest mishap.

One day, holding him close, Pei Xiao bit down on his soft lips. "Boss Shi, I believe it now. I must be your destined soulmate."

But Shi Yue blushed and stammered, "...Sorry. I just realized my master might have made a mistake back then."

Pei Xiao: "Then what do we do? Tonight is our wedding night!"

Shi Yue thought it over. "...It's fine. I haven't shattered yet, so it should be fine to just go along with it, right? Oh, and remember to be gentle. I really can shatter."

Of course he'd be gentle. This was his Pei Xiao's fragile little glass heart.

[Who says a mix-up can't lead to your destined soulmate?]

Theme: Love belongs in the open