I Refuse To Be The Villain

The protagonist here has a genuinely heavy history: child abuse, abandonment, being replaced by an adopted sibling, a past life that ended badly because of the people around him. The novel doesn't soften that. His talent in ancient Chinese painting gives the story texture, and the slow-burn romance with the male lead, who mostly respects the MC's pace rather than pushing, is handled better than this type of trauma narrative usually manages.

The adopted brother is also worth noting. He's not a flat antagonist but someone with his own insecurities and manipulative tendencies, which at least makes the family dynamics more complicated than a simple hero-versus-villain setup.

The problem is the MC's tendency to bottle everything up and interpret every ambiguous situation as confirmation of abandonment, and the story runs this pattern long enough that it starts to feel less like character depth and more like a loop. He withholds crucial information from his family, including his deafness and the circumstances of his kidnapping, in ways that extend the conflict well past the point where it has anything new to say. There's a fine line between earned angst and a protagonist whose victim mentality the narrative keeps protecting from challenge, and this story crosses it a few times.

At 3.6 it's worth reading if the artistic focus and slow-burn recovery arc appeal to you. Just know the family misunderstanding cycle runs longer than it probably should.