The Crime of Being Unromantic

A year into her marriage, Wen Baizhi finds herself in a marital crisis, beset by trouble at home and abroad. At home, her husband, twelve years her senior, is emotionally clueless. Outside, a younger man keeps adding her on WeChat and wooing her with every romantic gesture he can think of. By comparison, her husband, Mo Tinghuai, seems even more quiet and reserved, a perfect gentleman with rigid manners. She leaves a light on while waiting for him to come home late from entertaining clients. He politely tells her she doesn't have to wait. She prepares a birthday surprise for him, only to receive a fond, indulgent smile, as if he's watching a child play. Most outrageous of all, his self-imposed gentlemanly restraint means they have sex no more than twice a week. "Do you think... he can't perform?" Her friend hesitates. "It's just a marriage of convenience anyway. Why not each do your own thing?" Wen Baizhi rejects the idea. That very night, she lies that her period came early, then later makes an excuse to move out of the master bedroom. Mo Tinghuai accepts sleeping in separate rooms and becomes more mysterious by the day, constantly checking messages on his phone. Wen Baizhi suspects he's cheating and thinks their marriage has finally reached its end. Until one day, the younger man texts her, "I'm not coming home for dinner tonight," then retracts the message a second later, as if he'd sent it from the wrong account. Thinking of her suspicions, Wen Baizhi opens Mo Tinghuai's phone and finds a WeChat account with the younger man's profile picture and only one contact: her. Overnight, the younger man turns into an older man, and Wen Baizhi is dumbfounded. Mo Tinghuai knows perfectly well that when they first met, Wen Baizhi liked his gentlemanly restraint. After they married, he carefully maintained that image, but the two of them only drifted further apart. So he made up a new identity to get close to her and learn more about her, hoping to win back his young wife. Instead, he accidentally made her think he was an interloper. He was content to discover the side of her she kept hidden from others, but couldn't help feeling jealous. He could only be glad that she always rejected the interloper and never fell for him. Until one day, he used his alternate account to message her: You don't seem to love your husband. Have you thought about leaving him? This time, she replied: I have. Once I'm divorced, would you consider being with me? With a crash, the cup fell from his hand and shattered on the floor. // A sweet romance about a man who cheats on himself, then learns how to love. No cheating, and no groveling-after-the-breakup arc. The title comes from the song