On the Verge of Desire

[Fake Good Girl, Real Flirtatious Schemer x Playful Young Master Who Sees Through Her but Says Nothing]

◎Wealthy-family school drama|International high school|High-stakes mind games|A battle of push and pull◎

The international high school division at Jinxi International is a battlefield of money and status without a single shot fired.

Fang Yao Cen is the most harmless-looking person there.

She always wears a crisp, well-fitted white shirt, her vermilion uniform bow neatly tied. Her uncolored black hair is pulled into a high ponytail, and her appearance is cool and composed. She is the “model student” who never tries to stand out.

But no one knows

that Yao Cen’s real talent is laying the most exquisite traps behind her most obedient smile.

*

A family crisis forced her to take half a year off school. Her family’s fortunes plummeted. Her mother remarried, but her stepfather soon revealed his cold, mean-spirited nature, secretly making one demand after another.

To protect herself, Fang Yao Cen returned to school and fashioned herself into the most exquisite bait,

setting her sights on the one person at Jinxi no one could hope to reach: Ying Xuan.

Ying Xuan is the very picture of an aristocratic young master.

His family is illustrious, he does as he pleases, and he always handles everything with effortless ease.

He is used to watching from the sidelines as everyone schemes and struggles for a single word from him.

Fang Yao Cen thought she had disguised herself perfectly,

carefully plotting each step, playing hard to get, and performing a flawless act as a “flirtatious beauty.”

Little did she know, Ying Xuan had seen through her intentions long ago.

What began as an ambiguous game in which their true identities were a mystery was actually a high-stakes battle of wits.

She deliberately tempts him; he counters every move.

Whoever falls in love first loses everything.

*

One day, a thin mist spread across the washroom mirror, clouding it with warm steam.

Yao Cen lowered her eyes and complained as if sighing, “Because of you, they all say I’m fake, that I’m acting all the time.”

“What else?”

“They say I’m one person to your face and another behind your back, that I’m too calculating.”

“Are they wrong?” Ying Xuan asked, leaving no room for excuses. He turned her flushed face toward him with his thumb, wiped the steam from the mirror, and revealed their intertwined reflections. He spoke slowly. “Just like how you had an ulterior motive when you first approached me.”

The title was inspired by: “More intoxicating than pure love is the kind of ambiguity that’s held back and carefully restrained to the extreme.”

- She deliberately gets close on the surface, but he saw it coming all along

- High-IQ push and pull|Dual disguises|Hunter and prey|Matched opponents

- You willingly take the bait; I willingly fall into your trap

Coming next: “May All Your Wishes Come True” (the male lead’s younger sister from this novel)

[After years of hardship, may the years grant all my wishes]

Everyone in their circle knows that the eldest Miss Ying lacks for nothing.

An illustrious family, beauty and figure, talent and intelligence…

Everything an ordinary girl could hardly hope to possess, she was born with.

After more than a decade of smooth sailing, Ying Ning never imagined that one day she would fall from her lofty perch into the mud.

Well, if she fell, she fell.

Ying Ning comforted herself.

At worst, she would take a little time to recover, then pick herself back up.

But can someone tell her:

Where did the handsome man who caught her so securely come from??

In the eyes of the students at Siqi, Zhou Yu and Ying Ning had nothing in common.

Though both were well-known figures,

one was a transfer student who had been at the top of the grade for years, buried in his books and taciturn to a fault;

the other was the school board chairman’s daughter, bright and outspoken, always poised and accustomed to being the center of attention.

They were in different grades,

from vastly different backgrounds, and practically strangers…

so no one would ever have connected them.

But no one knew.

They had once spent one afternoon after another together in the abandoned clock tower at their school.

Sunlight slanted through the window, tracing a warm rim of light along his profile.

Fine dust floated in the air, brushing past the black woven hair tie around her wrist and her thick, soft hair.

The girl looked up when she heard a sound.

She saw the shadows of the Roman numerals and clock hands from the enormous clock fall across the wall and the boy’s spotless white shirt.

For Ying Ning, her years at Siqi were a lifelong regret.

More than once, she had thought:

If only nothing unexpected had happened, and she could have gone to a better high school.

But Zhou Yu had been grateful more than once that Ying Ning had come to Siqi.

She was the most precious gift the years had rewarded him with, after he had used every bit of luck in his life to cross the hills of a poor village, walk the dusty roads of yellow earth, and tread through brambles.

#Healing story#

Slow burn, told in reverse chronology, split evenly between school and urban life

The pampered darling of heaven x the refined, handsome rising star

1v1|Both each other’s first love|Happy ending

[Notes]

- During their school years, the male lead comes from a poor family and relies on the heroine’s family to fund his education. He is resilient and steadfast as bamboo and cypress, and though poor, he has high aspirations.

- The heroine’s family is genuinely wealthy. They do not go bankrupt, and she is not a fallen heiress. There is another explanation for the fall from her perch at the beginning of the synopsis. Even after the male lead makes his comeback, the heroine is still richer than he is.

- The male lead has a crush on the heroine.

Theme: Stay grounded and let go of wishful thinking