Breaking a Gardenia Branch

A minor scandal recently made the rounds in City A. The Song family's young master broke up with Qiao Zhi, the girlfriend he'd been dating for over six months. The very next day, he found someone new, and Qiao Zhi was left with nothing.

With nowhere to go, Qiao Zhi had her ex waiting for her to come crawling back, while everyone else waited to laugh at her and watch her fall from the clouds into the mud.

Just then, someone extended an olive branch to Qiao Zhi.

Xie Li, the most famous rising tycoon in City A, found her and offered her help. She was wary of him, but he wanted nothing in return.

Xie Li was always warm on the surface but cold at heart, never taking anyone seriously. When someone like him approached Qiao Zhi, everyone assumed he just wanted to have a little fun. Even Qiao Zhi thought so.

But when she was finally about to leave, this imposing man, always so refined in front of others, stopped her and asked in a restrained voice, "What exactly is wrong with me? Why won't you stay?"

*

At a certain banquet six months earlier, Xie Li had first seen Qiao Zhi. She was the female companion the Song family's young master had brought along to bolster his image, or, as people put it, his "girlfriend," who would be gone in a few months.

Unlike the women who usually appeared at events like this, Qiao Zhi looked too young, too innocent, too lively, and a little too familiar. The only thing she radiated was youth. She was just like her name, richly fragrant like a gardenia, heedless of everyone else as she bloomed on her own.

As if possessed, when he walked past the "perfect couple," Xie Li, who never paid attention to other people's conversations, found himself listening. He heard her whisper to her boyfriend in a coquettish voice, "I really don't want to stay here. Come with me. If anyone asks, just say I kidnapped you."

Xie Li couldn't remember how the other man had replied, but he remembered exactly what he himself had thought at the time.

No matter what it took, he wanted this girl to speak to him in that same tone.

But when she finally did speak to him that way, he realized...

He didn't want to hear it just once.

★ Both leads are virgins, a little coercive romance, sweet story. A jealous tycoon who thinks he hasn't fallen in love but actually fell long ago x a seemingly sweet and soft but actually selfish and mischievous little troublemaker.

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