Heart's Devotion

That she's just your sister.

Qi Zhan moved his face closer and said, "I've told you so much. Do you understand?"

"Understood..."

"What do you understand?"

"That she's just your sister."

"Anything else?"

"What else could there be..."

I turned my face away and didn't look at him. He snorted and said a bit angrily, "Yun Chu, are you really stupid or just pretending to be stupid?"

"Who's stupid..." I vaguely knew what he meant and said unhappily, "Qi Zhan, on the first night of our wedding, you said you didn't want to marry me. How was I supposed to understand?"

"That was because you made me angry."

"I..." I turned my face back, and my lips just brushed against his. He took the opportunity to kiss me and said, "Those were just angry words. You know what I want to say."

I felt a strange and complicated feeling in my heart. This feeling started from hearing his explanation and was like a seed taking root and sprouting, filling my whole heart.

My voice was very soft. "What if I don't know? I want to hear you say it."

After a long time, I heard him say helplessly, "The person I want to marry has always been you."

When I really heard him say this, I don't know why I felt like I had fallen into a jar of honey, and sweetness seeped from the bottom of my heart.

I murmured, "Why..."

Why did Qi Zhan want to marry me? This possibility that I and he himself had denied from the beginning turned out to be the truth. I really couldn't understand.

I knew Qi Zhan was good to me, but that was only because I was the daughter of the Yun family. He had to take care of me and marry me. If it were someone else, the result would probably be the same.

As if hearing my inner voice, Qi Zhan sighed. "Because I like you, Yun Chu."

His words were like a firework exploding in my ear, illuminating everything that I had avoided and ignored.

I used to attribute those good feelings to illusions and illusory bubbles under the exchange of interests. But when I heard him say this, I found that I couldn't make my heartbeat seem so calm, and the inexplicable jealousy I had towards Xuanxuan seemed to have found a reason.

I blinked and said in the thunderous heartbeat, "So that's how it is."

My seemingly indifferent reaction made Qi Zhan's face darken again.

I saw the coldness in the corners of his eyes and suddenly smiled. "Brother Ah Zhan actually likes me."

His breathing stopped for a moment, and his eyes were full of unpredictable emotions. He turned over and pressed me under him. "What did you call me?"

I wanted to joke, but seeing this, I shut my mouth and didn't dare to say it again. But Qi Zhan seemed determined not to let me get out of bed today if I didn't call him that, so I had to endure my shame and call him a few more times.

Finally, he said, "Don't call anyone else like that in the future."

I was about to refute him when I heard him say, "You know I'm not talking about your two real brothers."

Tsk, I think he's being too controlling.

But this time, I didn't argue with him again.

The liking that Qi Zhan said always made me feel so unreal, but I could also notice it inadvertently in some places.

I like to drink peach blossom wine, and there happened to be a peach tree in his yard. When I mentioned making wine to him, he said, "If you want to drink, there's some buried under that tree."

"Really? That's great!"

"It was originally for you."

"Oh."

I pretended to be calm, but I couldn't suppress the upward curve of my lips. After a while, I couldn't help but say, "How did you know I would have a chance to drink it? Have you been planning something for a long time?"

He raised his eyebrows. "So what if I have? I haven't settled the score with you for pretending to be stupid all this time."

"I didn't! Stop being so handsy..."

I gradually realized that I used to be able to have the upper hand when arguing with him, but now we can't talk for three sentences without getting to an indescribable topic and I always end up being taken advantage of by him. Thinking about it this way, it seems that I'm at a disadvantage.

One day, I finally remembered the lantern and went to the attic to look for it, but it was gone.

I tentatively asked Qi Zhan, "Last time I went to that attic and saw a lantern. Why is it gone now?"

His face didn't change. "There was no lantern. You must have remembered it wrong."

I stared at him suspiciously. "How could you throw away my thing?"

"I didn't throw it away..." He stopped suddenly and refused to continue.

Qi Zhan is soft-hearted when faced with kindness, so I smiled softly. "Brother Ah Zhan, why did you hide my lantern? It's not something to be ashamed of."

"Yun Chu, be normal!"

I saw his slightly red ears and almost couldn't hold back my laughter. So he can be shy too?

I continued to speak in a coquettish voice. "I know Brother Ah Zhan has liked me for a long time. What's there to hide?"

Finally, Qi Zhan couldn't bear it anymore and covered my mouth. It took him a long time to let me go.

He said, "Yun Chu, that was the first gift you gave me."

My arrogance immediately disappeared.

Qi Zhan doesn't lack money, and he doesn't lack people giving him gifts either. Every year on his birthday, the Yun family would prepare gifts and I would send them. So I myself never prepared a gift for him. At other times, there was even less reason to give him a gift.

I didn't expect that he would care about this. I was silent for a while and said, "Then I'll make it up to you in the future."

He hugged me and whispered in my ear, "It doesn't matter. You are the best gift for me."

Later, I found out that there was another reason why he kept that lantern.

There is an unwritten rule at the Lantern Festival that if you accept a lantern from the opposite s*x, it means you accept their feelings.

At that time, I didn't understand the rules and did whatever I wanted, but it made Qi Zhan nervous and worried all night. It wasn't until the next day when he saw that I was acting normally that he realized he was being overly sentimental.

He was so angry that he couldn't even get angry at me, so he locked the lantern in the attic. He didn't expect that I would see it.

"So this is why you teased me on our wedding night?"