Fake Couple

With her family pressuring her to get married, Xiang Feixing hurriedly found a fake girlfriend to get them off his back. After weighing his options, he picked Qin Dai, a childhood acquaintance whose family wasn't very well-off.

They made three rules: she had to act sweet and well-behaved in public, they were only a couple on the surface, and once the money changed hands, they would go their separate ways with no strings attached.

Although he initially disliked how tight-lipped she was, Xiang Feixing gradually got used to having her around.

She was gentle and easy to be around, taking care of him in every way. She cared about him far more than a pretend girlfriend should. Eventually, Xiang Feixing even thought it might be nice to make their fake relationship real.

But Qin Dai didn't seem to feel the same way.

As their contract neared its end, she ignored their engagement and started to distance herself from him, while growing closer to someone else.

Xiang Feixing was displeased, then upset. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and asked where she thought that left him, her real fiance. Afterward, feeling that he'd been too harsh, he offered her a way out: if she cut ties with that guy now, he could pretend nothing had happened.

But Qin Dai, completely missing the point, frowned and told him that once their contract expired, their relationship would naturally end too.

Xiang Feixing stared at her in disbelief. "So you never took me seriously, not even once?"

"...Of course not. We agreed from the start that once the money changed hands, we'd go our separate ways."

*

Back in middle school, Qin Dai fell in love with someone, and seven or eight years later, she still loved him.

By a twist of fate, they became a pretend couple. They had a contract, and their engagement had been arranged in a hurry, but she couldn't help feeling that their pretend romance might become real. So, with her heart fluttering, she once tested the waters with Xiang Feixing.

But he merely glanced at her and asked in a perfectly casual tone:

"We agreed from the start that once the money changed hands, we'd go our separate ways."

Theme: Love needs to be spoken plainly.