The White Moonlight's Stand-In Strategy

[Modern Romance + Chasing His Wife] In one moment, Zhang Jia'er transmigrated into a book and became the sacrificial wife in a domineering CEO novel, married off to Huo Sizhou, president of the Huo Group. Her best friend Li Li had it even worse: she became the stand-in for the Huo family's nephew, Huo Nanting, and his unattainable ideal. The Huo uncle and nephew had spent half their lives fixated on the same living woman. The uncle married a wife but treated her as if she didn't exist, while the nephew kept a substitute as nothing more than a shadow. Each was convinced that the woman in the other's life was desperately in love with him, suffering because she couldn't have him.

After awakening to the truth of their new book-world lives, the two women saw through every trope. On the surface, they played the parts of devoted women trapped in unrequited love, crying and swearing they would never leave, cementing their image as people who couldn't live without their men. No matter how cold and distant the uncle and nephew became, they clung to them and refused to let go. In reality, they felt nothing and were even secretly amused. They had just one goal: Who wants your love? We couldn't care less. We'll wait until the two obsessives are sick and tired of us, then let them offer a ten-million breakup payout.

Who would want to be a stand-in or a mere ornament? Who cares about the uncle and nephew's obsessive devotion? What if the ideal woman comes back? So what if the domineering CEOs force their love on them? They never wanted favoritism or true love. They just wanted to take the money and run, travel far away, shop, sightsee, drink fine wine, and enjoy life with handsome male models. They wanted no part of this melodramatic mess of love and hate.

Huo Sizhou's cold heart was moved by her “devotion,” and he dropped his aloof act to pursue her relentlessly. Huo Nanting was touched by her “deep feelings,” set aside his arrogance, and gave her his whole heart. The uncle and nephew went from indifference and dismissiveness to desperate pursuit. Their forced confinement turned into a relentless campaign to win their wives back. They gave everything, thinking it would earn them true love, only to realize in the end that the women had wanted nothing from the start but to be paid off. They had never given them the slightest affection.