Last Year's Snow

Also known as *After My Sick Ex Locked Me Away* and *The Amnesiac Father of Her Child Keeps Trying to Become Her Stepfather* [The heroine seems dim-witted in the blurb, but she is actually rational and clever] [The hero seems cold and sick in the blurb, but he is actually gentle and devoted] 1. When Ji Ci abandoned Cheng Yin ten years ago, they shared a tiny rented room and depended on each other to get by. Sadly, she had forced their relationship into being, so it was never going to bear sweet fruit. He left without a word, vanishing on a snowy day. Years later, they meet again. She is a single mother who has finally managed to find a job, while he is the youngest vice president in the group. Calling them superior and subordinate would make it sound like she was reaching far above her station. Their statuses were worlds apart. Cheng Yin knew full well how annoying she had been back then, so she strictly maintained professional boundaries. Polite and distant, always addressing him formally, she did her best to fulfill her duties as a subordinate. But he had become anything but proper. That day, the entryway was lit, light pouring down from above and blocked by his tall frame, his dark shadow towering like a jade mountain about to topple. Ji Ci had shed his usual composure. His shirt was soaked and hanging open, leaving her nowhere to rest her gaze but on his face. “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to stay calm. He sneered. “I should be asking you that.” “Did you book the hotel?” Cheng Yin: ...I did. “Did you undo the buttons?” Cheng Yin: ...That, too. To him, her speechless attempt to explain herself was as good as a confession. And since she had confessed, she ought to face the consequences. In a low voice, he demanded, “I should be asking you: why do you keep bringing me to places like this?” Just before the storm swept her away completely, Cheng Yin was briefly bewildered. What had he just said? “Keep” bringing him? They had not seen each other in over ten years. When could she possibly have done this “again and again”? Was she the one who had lost her mind, or was something seriously wrong with him? 2. Cheng Yin's happy life ended with an anonymous photo: her father posing with his mistress and illegitimate daughter. Soon after, she survived a fire that nearly killed her. On Cheng Yin's birthday, her usually optimistic and levelheaded mother left a note and took her own life. Then her brother, the person she had depended on, suddenly disappeared without a word. Alone for ten years, Cheng Yin stubbornly carried on, locking away her painful past. But when someone from her past reappears, the story is bound to unfold. As the layers of fog lift, the answers will become clear, waiting for her to uncover them. She thought the eye condition she was born with was the source of every tragedy. She did not know it was proof that she had always been loved. Reader's Guide - They are not siblings. The heroine lived with the hero, who raised her when she was young. - The heroine does not know the child is the hero's, and neither does he. There is a reason. - Neither of them sleeps around indiscriminately. There is a reason. - The heroine did not decide to have the child on a whim. There is a reason. - The hero did not disappear without a word back then. There is a reason. - All the strange events are connected to an old case. - Some of the worldbuilding is imaginative extrapolation based on biomedical papers. - The hero has a sufficient and necessary reason for being unable to say “I love you” out loud from beginning to end. - Realistic setting, workplace drama, light mystery. - The daughter is unbelievably adorable. - One-on-one, happy ending, no angst, no angst, no angst. It's light and fun, really! The complete manuscript has been ready for three and a half years. Thank you for waiting, and thank you for your love. - Coming next: *Grumpy Immortal Lord, Stop Shouting and Let This Bear Hibernate* 1. Everyone in the small city knew that the man Qin Zilu dumped at the altar had become a genuine top-tier star. She clicked “Not interested” on every app. She could no longer watch his hit dramas or New Year's Eve galas. He had become a forbidden presence everywhere in her life. The people who had once laughed at her for marrying a delinquent now laughed at her for having no taste. But nobody knew that she had left Lin Qi only because winter had arrived. She had to return to Prison Law Mountain to hibernate. 2. When Qin Zilu first came down to the mortal world as the immortal lord's mount, she thought the Heavenly Realm's HR department had finally done something nice for her and given her an easy job. How could she have known that Lin Qi had been in secluded cultivation since ancient times because he had committed an enormous slaughter? The Heavenly Emperor had sealed him in the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Pool simply to temper the murderous nature of the God of Slaughter. No wonder such a cushy assignment had gone to her, an impure-blooded bear, instead of any of the Qin family's legitimate eldest bears. Fortunately, she was clever enough to offer five hundred years of cultivation as payment and get an intern of the God of Marriage to secretly sell her a red thread. Surely the immortal lord wouldn't casually threaten to kill his own wife, would he? 3. Question: As the bride, you missed the God of Slaughter's wedding. What are your chances of survival? Answer: Run! Run for your life! Teddy! In one sentence: Immortal Lord, don't shoot! It's your wife! Blurb dated 2024.08.19 Lazy, greedy black bear spirit vs. violent, cold-hearted young immortal lord Theme: A tribute to mothers and the many people working in biomedical science