When His Heart Stirred, the Iceberg Melted

Mu Chen had lived for twenty-seven years without ever falling for anyone. He was the heir to the Mu Group and was known in their circles as an iceberg. His parents had been arranged by his grandfather to have him, then went abroad. His grandfather had controlled every step of his upbringing, turning his education, career, and marriage into moves in a grand game. Even after three years of marriage to the Zheng family’s daughter, all his ex-wife said as she signed the divorce papers was, “Have you ever smiled at me?” He hadn’t. He couldn’t smile.

Until the day of the divorce, when he met a strange young woman in a hospital stairwell. She stood with her hands on her hips, sternly scolding her mother, then turned around and gently reminded her to take her medicine. Tough yet tender, full of life. Mu Chen stood in the shadows as something frozen in his chest for twenty-seven years cracked open. That night, he dreamed of her for the first time. He woke drenched in sweat, his fingertips trembling. He didn’t even know her name, yet he already wanted to hide her away, where only he could see her.

To escape his grandfather’s control, he wagered everything, concealed his identity, and joined the entry-level ranks of his own company. He never expected her to be at the desk next to his, barely two meters away. Li Yuanqing was twenty-two, from a single-parent family, with a frail mother. She shouldered the costs of medicine, rent, and daily living on her own. Every day, she rode an old electric scooter to work and brought a lunch of plain rice and greens. She treated him like a kind coworker and smiled as she thanked him, completely unaware of the dark red turmoil in his eyes.

Soon, he discovered that his body was undergoing an inexplicable change: when someone else approached her, his stomach hurt; when she was upset, his chest tightened; when she was happy, his fingertips went numb...