He Burns Brighter Than the Stars

Shen Yanbing is known in the business world as the “AI CEO.” Born with an emotional disorder, she sees everything as a stream of cold data. Her parents and brothers are merely entries on a list of obligations, and running the family business is just a math problem. Then the “younger brother” she has protected for years shatters his disguise. Gu Yu, the illegitimate son of an old family friend who was raised by the Shens, has inherited the chaebol’s power and now fixes a gunlike gaze on her.

This marriage is the perfect solution, according to her calculations. She signs the contract calmly, unaware that Gu Yu has already woven a vast web around her. He remembers how, when he was seven and someone shoved him into the snow, she drove away his bullies with a hand colder than an icicle, yet that touch burned through his desolate life. After ten years of lying in wait, he wants more than her sense of duty. He wants to make her feel with every fiber of her being.

When a business rival sparks a crisis of trust with a scheme to drive them apart, and a childhood friend from a prominent family uses a gentle blade to cut through her defenses, Shen Yanbing’s meticulously ordered palace of logic crumbles for the first time. As pain tears through her heart, she stares in a daze at her tear-streaked reflection. So this is what heartbreak feels like. Meanwhile, Gu Yu crushes every obstacle and kneels outside the Shen family home in the pouring rain, his eyes bloodshot like a trapped beast. “You don’t have to understand love, but you must trust me.”

With guidance from a psychologist, she begins to decipher the physical signals that arise because of him. His temperature of 39.2 degrees Celsius when he kisses her, paired with a heart rate of 128 beats per minute, is labeled “happiness.” The dull ache in her chest when he is hurt, rated 7.3 out of 10, is labeled “heartache.” When the prenatal monitor picks up their baby’s heartbeat, she finally takes his trembling hand and gives the ultimate definition on a terrace beneath a cascade of stars: “Gu Yu, I love you. It isn’t duty. It’s a survival instinct, as natural as breathing.”