The Price of a Secret Crush Is Thirty Thousand Yuan

At twenty-seven, Gu Siqiao discovered that someone had hacked the Penguin account he’d abandoned ten years ago. The hacker used Gu Siqiao’s account to message every old classmate in his contacts, asking to borrow money. Fortunately, the scam was so outdated that almost no one fell for it. Except Xue Lou. They’d never been close back then, and had no contact now. Xue Lou was just an old high school classmate Gu had barely known, yet he unhesitatingly transferred thirty thousand yuan to President Gu of Window Group, who claimed he couldn’t afford his surgery. ...What an idiot. It took Gu Siqiao a while to remember him as he stared at the message notification. He seemed to be the poor student Gu had spotted sitting in the front row of the honors class through a crack in the door while serving punishment in the hallway. Gu Siqiao had been bored in the hallway, so he liked to stare through the crack at that handsome face. It wasn’t as if Xue Lou was going to lose anything by paying attention in class while Gu killed time. It took some asking around to learn that the top scorer in the college entrance exams was now so buried in debt because of his family that he could barely find a stable place to live. What a mess. Gu Siqiao’s nearly vanished conscience stirred. The man had been willing to help a stranger, so Gu could afford to be generous too. So Gu Siqiao called Xue Lou, intending to tell him that his company was hiring an executive secretary. * At seventeen, Xue Lou worked desperately to reach the top of his year so he could sit in the seat by the door in the front row, where he could catch a glimpse of Gu Siqiao’s white shirt through the crack with his peripheral vision. At twenty-seven, a long-forgotten message cost Xue Lou his last bit of savings, but by sheer luck it also gave him the chance to exchange a few brief, inconsequential words with Gu Siqiao. Xue Lou thought that was all the contact they’d ever have. Until one day, his phone rang. The caller ID read: Jiangcheng No. 1 High School, Gu Siqiao. * “You stand upon the bridge and gaze at the view; the one gazing at the view watches you from the tower.”, Bian Zhilin, “A Fragment” Coming soon: Please Don’t File for Divorce After Losing Your Memory: After the great war between the Federation and Country A ended, Lin Yu finally received news from the front. The good news: The Federation had won. The bad news: His husband, the Federation’s youngest alpha major general, Tan Song, had been wounded on the battlefield. After waking up, he’d lost all memory of himself and the three years he’d been married to a beta. The messenger regretfully conveyed that Major General Tan had refused the military’s order to return to the rear for recovery, and had filed for divorce. Major General Tan’s reason was that the war wasn’t over, and romantic entanglements would compromise the mission. What’s more, he could never fall in love with a fragile beta who clung to others like a vine. No one expected Lin Yu to accept it calmly. Betas had an extremely low fertility rate. In the three years since he’d left the military and married Tan Song, he’d worked hard to conceive, all so he could give birth to the child promised in their marriage contract when Tan Song returned... Or, counting the one who’d been stillborn, it should have been their second child. Now, he could finally bring it all to an end ahead of schedule. * One year later. The battlefield was changing by the minute, and the Federation was on the defensive. Just then, the military gained a crack shot who, only months after his first deployment, broke the Federation’s all-time record for individual combat performance. The sharpshooter’s real name was classified. The only thing known was that his secondary gender was merely beta. Using his authority as a major general, Tan Song secured five minutes to speak with the sharpshooter, hoping to persuade him to join his unit. The moment the video call connected, a beautiful man appeared on screen, his looks utterly at odds with his reputation in the military: pale, slender, aloof, with calm, mature features and an air of timeworn allure. Watching Tan Song stare at him in a daze, the beautiful beta’s eyes curved gently. “Long time no see, Major General Tan,” he said. “Or should I call you... my ex-husband?” Theme: Love means remaining faithful, just as you were at the start.