Private Chef [Studying Abroad and Living Together]

[Comments open; updates every other day before the story goes premium. Please don't let it build up!]

Differences in status | Studying abroad | From living together to becoming a couple | Romantic tension | Both are each other's first and only

Gentle, radiant campus beauty x cocky, handsome bad boy and total show-off

Film student x music producer

-

When her funding for studying abroad was cut off, Su Jinyan had no choice but to work part-time as a private chef.

Who knew she would accidentally cross paths with Zhou Yubai, the most mysterious young heir in New York's overseas student circle, a notorious playboy along the East Coast. He had the face of a charming man fresh from a night of drinking, and lived with carefree abandon.

He casually offered her a hundred thousand dollars to hire her.

The conditions: live-in service, three meals a day, and being on call whenever he wanted.

To save up for tuition, Su Jinyan could only steel herself and move into a townhouse on the Upper East Side. With dish after carefully prepared dish, she kept Zhou's picky stomach and sharp tongue in check, along with his occasionally restless heart.

She knew he was just playing around and had no intention of clinging to him. She only wanted to finish the contract and leave with her dignity intact.

Until one day, she accidentally left the pink note inviting her out with a senior student in the grocery bag. When she doubled back to look for it, there was a black card on the kitchen island.

As she stood there, stunned, a pair of long arms wrapped around her waist. His breath brushed close, then drifted away. "Jinyan, I don't want soup tonight."

His neat, thin lips pressed against the back of her neck, tracing the pale skin at her collar as he slowly murmured the rest of his sentence.

"I want something else."

-

When Zhou Yubai first met Su Jinyan, he didn't like her much.

What kind of cook wore a CHANEL suit and had a bewitching face like a seductress? He immediately decided she was a fake socialite, but didn't expose her. He tossed out a cold remark and went back to his room to sleep.

The next time he saw her was at a nightclub.

Dressed in a neat, immaculate white tweed suit, she seemed like a perfectly symmetrical six-pointed snowflake falling into his field of vision.

The liquor stung his tongue. Zhou Yubai narrowed his eyes, unable to stop thinking about the crystal-clear, tea-colored soup she'd made.

Well then, he might as well spend some money and have a little fun.

But she was just like her soup: simmering gently, never reaching a rolling boil.

As Zhou Yubai listened to that irritating "bubble, bubble," his gaze toward the kitchen grew darker. Didn't she even know how to flirt?

One day, his friends were teasing him in the group chat again. "Leo, that 'private chef' of yours is bound to end up in your bed sooner or later."

His phone buzzed on the floor. The person curled in his arms had just managed a brief nap and frowned. The blanket draped casually over them slipped from their shoulder, revealing suggestive red marks.

Zhou Yubai glanced down, switched his phone to silent, and typed furiously. He typed and deleted, until only one word remained: "Get lost!"

A moment later, another message appeared in the now-silent group.

"I'm the one climbing into her bed."

#Well-Brought-Up Shanghai Girl Under Control X Banished Illegitimate Son of the Beijing Elite

Theme: Eat well and keep moving forward.