[Powerful families | The chase-after-your-wife-to-the-crematorium trope | One-on-one, both untouched | Everyone is a good person]
Also known as My Wife Doesn’t Know I Like Her and The Stubborn, Bad-Tempered Puppy
A stubborn puppy versus a stubborn rose.
Stubborn people falling into a stubborn kind of love.
In Beijing’s elite circles, everyone says the marriage alliance between the Zhou and Yan families is a matter of mutual advantage. Only the two of them know that the “secret” from seven years ago and the ridiculous “rules” from three years ago have already made them inseparable.
Three years ago, an unexpected incident led Yan Zhuo, the youngest daughter of a declining wealthy family, and Zhou Si, heir to one of the most powerful families in the capital who had just taken over the family business and urgently needed a “fiancee” to fend off trouble, to sign a partnership contract that gave them each what they wanted.
They agreed to pretend to be a couple, keep out of each other’s private lives, and simply get what they needed. But over one lonely night after another in London, they glimpsed the real people behind each other’s masks. She wasn’t weak and in need of support; she was resilient, gritting her teeth and persevering through hardship. And he wasn’t a cold business machine; hidden beneath the surface were a tenderness and sense of responsibility few ever saw.
The clauses in their agreement gradually blurred amid their daily life together. The distance they deliberately maintained was quietly bridged by hot coffee during late-night overtime and silent companionship in moments of disappointment. As family pressure, shadows from the past, and outside criticism surged toward them like a tide, the contract that began as a matter of mutual benefit had already begun to blossom into genuine love.
