The Fake Couple Are Surprisingly Sweet

[The main story is complete, with bonus chapters updating. Please add my upcoming novel, Defeated by Her, to your reading list. Also, check out my friend's new serial, Star-Picking Diary. The blurb is below.]

Washed-up actress Wen Wan and top-tier star Jiang Qing are widely known as a couple married by contract.

Before their wedding, they never spoke in public. Every photo of them together showed each looking beautiful on their own.

A marketing account broke the story: "The CEO's family opposed his relationship with the actress, so to make it easier to date her, the CEO used ten percent of the group's shares to get the top-tier star and the actress to fake a marriage. Everyone knows the top-tier star is the CEO's illegitimate son, so he has no right to inherit."

Everyone believed it without a second thought.

When four couples joined a dating reality show, Wen Wan and Jiang Qing's participation became a hotly debated topic.

Before the show even aired, the two had already become the contrast group for the other three couples.

But once it aired...

Their relationship visibly began to change.

They went from refusing to yield to each other to granting each other's every wish.

Everyone had seen how mercilessly they hurt each other, and heard the tender surrender in his voice when he called her his little queen in the dead of night.

Onlookers gossiped:

"You call them a couple married by contract?"

"Did Wen Wan and Jiang Qing turn a fake romance into the real thing?"

"So who cheated on whom, the CEO or the top-tier star?"

The whole internet was divided.

Until a blurry, secretly filmed video went viral...

Young Jiang Qing stood in the shade, wearing a blue-and-white school uniform, hands in his pockets as he looked down at a slightly chubby-cheeked Wen Wan.

The bright, beautiful girl gently tugged at his collar. Her eyes were faintly red as she said something he couldn't make out.

He suddenly leaned in, bracing an elbow against the wall behind her. His usually aloof face softened with affection. "Little queen, if you want my life, it's yours."

#The fake couple were actually each other's first love#

#The industrial-grade sugar in their words suddenly doesn't taste bitter anymore#

#So what exactly happened between you all these years#

"Cool beauty + X + top-tier star with a devil-may-care attitude"

"Rekindled romance + 1v1"

"Reader's Guide"

1. The male lead has never cheated.

2. The leads have a misunderstanding and compete with each other early on. They are not based on real people.

3. The male lead is not an idol. He can sing and dance, but focuses mainly on creating. He won many major awards soon after his debut, and became a top-tier star thanks to his looks and talent.

4. If you're a devoted solo fan, this might not be for you.

5. Any opinions expressed in the story are for the sake of the plot and do not represent the author's views.

6. My awareness of potential triggers is limited. If I miss something, please let me know gently.

--- Next up: Sleepless Moonlight ---

On the night Bai Mian decided to call off her engagement, she slept with a poor student who had just returned from abroad.

The poor student was tall, handsome, and good-tempered. When he learned she'd been dumped, he even wrote her a thousand-word essay to comfort her.

She thought he mistook her for a rich woman. Drunk out of her mind, she said, "Find someone else. Big Sis really is broke now."

The poor student lowered his deep-set eyes, rolled up one trouser leg of his suit, and slowly knelt before her. With the palm wearing a three-hundred-thousand-yuan watch, he gently stroked her hair. "How much money would it take for you to keep sleeping with me?"

After earning her master's degree, Bai Mian restored cultural artifacts at a museum.

She worked nine to five, earned six thousand a month, and had a house and car. She lived comfortably enough.

One day, an international art and antiques exhibition invited her to serve as a consultant for a salary of one hundred thousand a day.

She wouldn't have to do anything, just collect the money.

Bai Mian kept a calm face, but felt deeply uneasy inside.

It wasn't until she saw the second young master of the Qin family at the exhibition, surrounded by admirers, that she understood. He wore a custom-tailored suit, and his handsome face wore a faintly bored expression. His watch, worth over a million, gleamed under the lights, making him look refined, languid, and untouchable. Even the stud in his left ear shone brilliantly.

Everyone was talking about his earring. They all agreed it was a unique, priceless masterpiece, and guessed it must have cost a fortune.

In the crowd, Bai Mian stared at the sky in speechless disbelief. "..."

No, she bought it on Taobao. Fifteen yuan for two pairs.

With free shipping, too.

No one in the antiques world has never heard of Qin Muyun. In the south, Qin; in the north, Qi. Everything south of the Huai River belongs to Master Qin.

Qin Muyun is cold and distant. Every relationship he has is for profit.

They say he always wears a strand of twelve-eyed dzi beads, whose value is beyond measure. Wherever the beads appear, he is sure to follow.

Until one day, the beads appeared on the wrist of an obscure young woman. She did her best to stay calm and shielded her friend. "I'll pay for it. Leave her alone."

Everyone stared at the dzi beads on her wrist. "..."

The young woman thought they were eyeing the beads and helpfully reminded them, "Don't bother looking. My friend gave them to me. Five yuan for two. They're not worth anything."

Everyone stared speechlessly at the sky.

Don't ask. She's Master Qin's woman. Who would dare make her pay?

"Top tycoon pretending to be poor, hidden big shot of the antiques world + X + hardworking office worker, rookie restorer"

"1v1"

--- Recommended: Star-Picking Diary by Wen An ---

Lu Yu, CEO of the Lu Group, is beautiful, rich, and exceptionally capable. She's never lost at the negotiating table, earning her the nickname She-Devil.

But even a she-devil can slip up, and someone managed to trick her.

She woke after a wild night to discover that her partner was the first love she'd dumped in college.

The handsome man calmly buttoned up his clothes and looked at her with cool, noble detachment, a faint smile playing on his lips. "Lu Yu, long time no see. You look a lot more haggard than you did eight years ago."

Lu Yu was furious.

Other people turn red-eyed when they reunite after a long separation.

She was red-faced too, but with anger. Of course she'd look haggard after being worn out all night.

She wanted to punch that infuriatingly handsome face.

-

Meng Shenyan, the heartthrob of Beicheng University, had fair skin, red lips, and an aloof, chaste air. It seemed no one could catch his eye.

Then Lu Yu, the business school's campus belle, drifted into his life like a cloud and boldly confessed to him.

The immortal had fallen to earth.

On Lu Yu's birthday, Meng Shenyan spent all his savings on a pair of silver rings to give her.

But the young lady merely glanced at them and said with a smile, "Meng Shenyan, give the rings to someone else. We're over."

-

Lu Yu always thought running into Meng Shenyan again was just a coincidence.

Only later did she realize that the world didn't have so many coincidences.

Every encounter had been planned long in advance.

Fake aloofness x secretly scheming

* Rekindled romance.

* Each other's first love.

* The male lead had an ordinary family background in college, but later became an even more powerful big shot than the female lead.

Theme: Love is eternal