Lin Zhiyao returns to China to join Lingxi Technology, only to run into the boy she knew seven years ago in the conference room. Shen Du, the investor’s technical consultant, has a small mole on his left ear and spins the silver pen she spent an entire afternoon admiring. More absurdly, his screensaver is a cherry-blossom selfie she sent and deleted three minutes later.
At a dinner arranged by their parents to push them toward marriage, he proposes a contract marriage: one year, with each getting what they want. She thinks it’s a cool-headed arrangement between adults, until she moves into his penthouse duplex. The door code is her birthday, there’s honey water by her bedside to soothe her stomach, and the living-room motion-sensor lights stay on for her until the early hours.
She finds his diary. Every day for seven years, he wrote about her. The last page reads: “In the seventh year, I lost her.”
Meanwhile, the cousin who caused their misunderstanding, the murderous stepmother, and the rival watching for an opportunity are peeling back the layers of truth about what happened seven years ago. When their contract is about to expire, she discovers a line of tiny gray print hidden in the agreement: “Early termination requires compensation of one heart to the other party.”
Second chances at love × contract marriage × an ex chasing his wife to the crematorium × two equally formidable leads
She uses algorithms to decode the world, but it takes her seven years to understand him.
