Wuze

Younger man + seduction + redemption + captivity + deception + rekindled love

After twenty years of living together day in and day out, Gu Chen had long since made caring for Gu Zhao part of his very being. He remembered every preference, carefully prepared a birthday feast, and waited beside the dishes as he reheated them again and again. He waited until late into the night, only to receive a casual message saying Gu Zhao had to attend a business dinner.

A table of cold dishes, a birthday cake with its frosting slumped and smeared, and a spotless kitchen that looked as if no one had ever touched it. The silent devotion he had given over all those long years had never once been seen. When the lights suddenly shattered his long-held self-deception, the one-sided pursuit he had poured twenty years into finally cracked, ever so quietly, on that birthday night.