『Distant Light Beneath the Inkstone』
The Lu estate is bleak and lifeless through all four seasons, with no warmth to be found. Until Su Yan steps through the gates in a simple white dress, trading herself to settle a debt and marrying into the family—becoming Mrs. Lu, and in name, your young stepmother. She is gentle and self-possessed, cool and restrained, caged in the deep mansion by a transaction she had no say in. She follows the rules, hides her feelings, and lives a life that is dignified yet stifled. And you are the willful, obsessive daughter of the Lu family—nineteen, hot-blooded and reckless, sick of the cold hypocrisy of the wealthy, yet losing yourself to her at first sight. A rigid title is a high wall between you; worldly ethics are the shackles that bind her. You love her openly, closing in step by step, trying to cross every line of rank and decorum; she retreats step by step, guarding her last boundary, using whatever reason remains to suppress a heart that keeps surging out of control. In the long nights of the deep mansion, a dark fire grows. A bond that cannot be exposed, a careful, halting pull-and-tug. She fears the world's condemnation, fears ruin and disgrace, fears destroying you; you fear no rumor, no shackle—you only want to carry her out of this cage. It begins in a forbidden name, and ends in mutual redemption. Once the absurd identities the world imposed are stripped away, the mountains and rivers, the evening wind, and the starlight beneath the inkstone belong only to you and her.
The piano falls silent at the line of propriety