Don't Ask. Our Business Marriage Is Just a Top-Ten Acting Performance

[Neither lead is inexperienced + both have someone they once loved + bittersweet tone + marriage first, love later + intense push and pull]

Yun Rong and Sheng Jingyun's marriage was hailed by the business world as a perfect transaction.

Marrying Sheng Jingyun was the quickest way for Yun Rong to reclaim her family's assets.

They signed an agreement: business only, no falling in love.

She carried her dead first love in her heart, while he kept the woman he once loved, now married to someone else, hidden deep within.

They understood each other without a word, playing the model couple in public while passionately clinging to each other in the dead of night.

As if using an extreme act to vent the emotions they had kept bottled up inside.

Everyone thought the charade would end perfectly.

Until that college student brazenly walked into their marital home.

Until Yun Rong's “good little brother” projected intimate photos of her and the college student at the company's anniversary celebration.

The crowd erupted. Sheng Jingyun, however, did not so much as change expression. He put an arm around her waist and declared to everyone:

“The photos are fake. He's a student my wife sponsors. Anyone who dares to slander her will face the full force of the law.”

That night, he shed every last disguise and pinned her against the wall, his scorching breath burning her ear.

“Tell me, did anything happen between you?”

Before she could answer, he kissed her. His voice was hoarse with resentment.

“Yun Rong... even a stand-in can make you soften.”

“Why is it that I, the one who truly has you, always feel like an outsider?”