Lu Yanzhou, a genius investor from Wall Street, is a notorious playboy in his circle. He treats relationships like asset allocation, maintaining seven “non-exclusive relationships” at once. He carefully calculates the return on every date and never allows himself to “take a loss.” His motto is: “As long as a relationship doesn't require exclusivity, it's a net asset.”
Then he meets Gu Chaoxi.
Raised in an orphanage, this top student in applied mathematics lives on scholarships, yet uses the Kelly criterion to win his private yacht at the gambling table. Cool-headed and sharp, she refuses to let anyone put a price on her. She tells him, “There's a missing variable in your relationship model: I can calculate my stop-loss point too.”
A man who treats love as a transaction meets a woman who treats transactions as a way to protect herself. He pursues, she runs. He offers money, she calculates her hourly rate. He uses exclusivity as a bargaining chip, and she says, “I don't take junk.” Then fake pregnancies, frame-ups, and academic slander follow one after another. One rainy night, he stands drenched outside her door. In the detention center, she silently asks him through the glass, “Do you believe me?”
At last, he understands: Some losses are ones you can never bring yourself to cut.
This is the story of a playboy who takes eight years to learn to care, and a top student who takes eight years to learn to trust. When the rational finally admits that some feelings can't be calculated, and the proud finally says, “There is no stop-loss point for what I feel for you,” you'll discover that true love isn't a transaction. It's a long-term holding you never sell.
