After the Contract Marriage Ends

A low-key couple in love | The aloof ex-husband turns into a love-struck CEO =w=

I’m not in a good place, so I’m planning to take this story off sale. Once the process is complete, I’ll refund everyone. If I have time later, I’ll do a major revision of the story from around the 60,000-word mark onward and give them a happy ending~

Their two-year contract marriage came to a perfect end.

On the first day after the divorce, Yun Li drank with her best friend on the terrace of her new home, celebrating her newly regained freedom as a single woman.

On the first day after the divorce, Duan Qingxu still wore his wedding ring. His friend said, “You skipped dinner, waiting to go home and eat with your wife? You’re quite the family man.”

-

Their friends all remembered when Yun Li first fell for Duan Qingxu. She had been as cool and plain as an autumn pear ice, but for this unrequited love, she was willing to melt.

But she had always been clear-headed, never fooling herself.

So when her friends asked, “If you like him so much, why not go to the university Duan Qingxu attends?”

She only smiled and said, “He doesn’t like me. There’s no point.”

-

Their marriage had been nothing more than a contract to put their elders at ease. Yun Li had no idea why, after they divorced, she kept running into her fake ex-husband more and more often.

He got into a car accident, and Yun Li had to visit him in the hospital.

He said his grandfather’s keepsake was left at their old marital home, so Yun Li racked her brains to find it for him.

She didn’t want to be so close to her ex-husband. Her attitude grew colder by the day as she tried to fade out of his life.

Then a new CEO suddenly appeared at the company. When Yun Li went to report to him for the first time, she was speechless.

Why was it Duan Qingxu again?

-

One day at a regular meeting, Yun Li pretended to put on her old wedding ring to politely turn down a colleague who was pursuing her.

She hadn’t expected Duan Qingxu to see it.

Even more surprising, he was wearing one, too.

The custom platinum rings had matching wave-shaped bands. His and Yun Li’s were clearly a pair.

After the meeting, Yun Li chatted with a colleague in the elevator. The colleague looked at her wedding ring. “You’re so young, and already married again?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Is he a good guy?”

“...He’s all right.”

After her colleague left, Duan Qingxu cornered Yun Li in the elevator.

The man wore a dark suit. Tall and striking, with tousled black hair falling over his forehead, his narrow eyes deep yet bright.

“Isn’t that the ring I gave you?”

“Where did you get a new husband?”

-

“I ought to believe there’s something else, but nothing else can be trusted. Only you are real.”

“You are both my misfortune and my great good fortune,”

“innocent and infinite.”

Jorge Luis Borges, The Beloved

A story about two low-key people falling in love =w=

First love for both, happy ending. Content warnings are in the author’s note in chapter one~

Coming soon: Pride of the Frosty Night [Marriage Before Love]. If you’re interested, please add it to your favorites.

The Zhou and Zhao families suddenly announced a marriage alliance, stunning the business world and sending their stock prices on a roller coaster.

The jewelry industry’s most famous rivals had been locked in a bitter struggle for ten years.

Was the way to break the deadlock really to make the next generation share a bed?

No one knew how Zhao Xuejin and Zhou Chonglin had gotten married.

The last time they appeared together in public, they had made no secret of their hostility.

One was a rebellious hunter in a tailored suit, the other a seductive snow fox in a strapless evening gown.

After their wedding, a video of them appeared in public again.

On a rainy night, Zhao Xuejin twisted her ankle. She kicked off her red high heel and opened her arms to the man who had just gotten out of the car.

“Chonglin, carry me.”

The man had no umbrella, and water dripped from his tousled hair. His eyes were bright and deep, his expression unreadable.

He raised his eyes as if without a care, his gaze meeting the camera. Then he put an arm around Zhao Xuejin’s shoulders and waist and hoisted her over his shoulder.

-

In business, you stop at nothing to win. Charm is one more tool at your disposal.

Zhao Xuejin remembered the night she had acted on impulse.

She couldn’t say whether it was fate. In a secluded hotel across the ocean, she saw Zhou Chonglin alone in an open-air lounge.

That night, the snow was cold and crisp. She took off her suit jacket, tossed it aside, and staggered toward him.

The first time she met Zhou Chonglin’s eyes, she saw a hunter’s gaze, clear and keen.

He had obviously seen through her act of being drunk, but still took her back to his room.

They understood each other without a word. After that, they pretended to be deeply in love at every turn, all the way to the wedding altar.

-

Zhao Xuejin studied four foreign languages, working day and night to earn credits in Europe so she could return home sooner and take over the company, allowing her ailing parents to enjoy their retirement.

Her parents had been exhausted by the Zhou family. She felt neither love nor hatred for Zhou Chonglin. She only wanted to achieve her goal.

She realized she had fallen for him later.

Perhaps no one could help falling for Zhou Chonglin: a rebellious genius with effortless control over everything. He was even exceptional in the bedroom.

Zhao Xuejin nearly lost everything in one great gamble.

Fortunately, she later discovered something.

It seemed Zhou Chonglin had fallen in love with her long before that.

Coming soon: Spring Blossoms in the Capital

Su Yaohan called the police to catch a thief and caught her fiancé cheating.

He was no longer the shy young man who used to bring her flowers. He was solidly built, and nothing like the cautious, deferential person he had been in front of her grandfather.

In front of the police and the other woman, he berated Su Yaohan. “You don’t love me at all. I can’t take it anymore!”

Su Yaohan had always had everything go her way and never cared much about anything.

For once, the incident got to her, and she went on a blind date for the first time in her life.

The rooftop garden restaurant was quiet. The late-spring sunset slanted through the room, shrouding the man’s silhouette in dusky light and making him seem all the more refined and aloof, as well as untouchable.

At the end of the date, Su Yaohan drained her glass of red wine and asked just one question.

“If we really got married, would you leave me without a word because there was no love in our marriage?”

The man answered softly, “No.”

Su Yaohan relaxed. “As long as you’d talk it over with me.”

At that, the man smiled faintly, a hint of shadow passing through his cool eyes.

“You seem to have misunderstood what I meant.”

-

Only later did Su Yaohan realize that the man she’d met didn’t match the information her matchmaker had given her.

The profile said he was the general manager of a well-known technology company, an outstanding man by ordinary standards.

But the man who showed up was a brilliant new star in the business world, with an immeasurable fortune and sole control of Ruiling Technology Group.

As it happened, he was also the general manager’s direct superior.

On their wedding night, she casually asked him about it.

She hadn’t expected the man, who looked so refined and chaste, to be so vindictive. He didn’t bother explaining the reason, saying only, “You got my name wrong at the wedding this morning, but now you’re so interested in someone else’s business.”

The night mist was like torn velvet. Amid their tangled breaths, the man took the rose lipstick from her lips and traced his name on her waist, stroke by stroke.

Fu Jingci.

-

Su Yaohan had never imagined that one day someone else’s happiness and sorrow would matter more to her than her own.

She never expected that afterward, she would discover that Fu Jingci, who claimed never to have had a first love, often wrote letters to an unknown woman.

Unwilling to settle for less, she signed the divorce papers on her birthday and left them beside his pillow.

Later, a tall stack of yellowed letters was piled in front of her like a mountain of Christmas presents.

Fu Jingci’s cool, composed eyes were lowered. For a moment, he looked like the carefree, audacious boy he’d once been.

But his eyes held years of emotion, mixed with a longing that seemed forever out of reach, growing wild and untamed.

“I should have sent these to you ten years ago.”

Fu Jingci pulled the bottom envelope from the stack and asked softly, “Won’t you open it and have a look?”

Theme: Loving yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance