Absurd Romance

Coming soon: Dangerous Boss. Blurb below. Please visit my author page and add it to your collection!

◆ Marriage first, love later | Bickering couple | Hilarious drama | Urban fairy tale

◆ A tsundere capitalist who says one thing but does another × a seemingly mild-mannered yet rebellious office worker

1.

At twenty-six, Tong Hua failed to change jobs and became unemployed.

The job market was brutally competitive. Employers judged you by your education, appearance, and age, and even whether you were married or had children became part of the hiring criteria.

Determined to land her dream job, Tong Hua decided to present herself as a married woman whose husband had died during the interview.

“Fate was cruel to me. My husband died young in a car accident, just when we were happiest together…”

“I’ll never find another man as perfect as my husband, with his consistently handsome looks, rock-solid abs, and stable income…”

“On so many lonely nights, I can’t help remembering how happy we used to be…”

At the end, she clutched her chest and said mournfully, “No one could ever compare to him. I’ll never fall in love again or get married, let alone have children with another man. All I want now is to bury myself in work…”

After she successfully joined the company, the more she talked with her coworkers, the more detailed her story about her late husband became.

For example, her WeChat profile picture still hinted at him, and whenever she saw flowers, she remembered that he’d been allergic to pollen. To fend off workplace sexual harassment, she even gave her late husband a career worthy of a romantic drama: she was a widow.

Everything was perfectly airtight, until the company was acquired and her coworkers eyed the newly appointed CEO suspiciously.

“He’s 186 centimeters tall, graduated from a prestigious university, and has an impressive presence. He’s handsome and aloof, has a beauty mark beneath his eye, is allergic to pollen, never takes sugar in his coffee, and runs a tech company. Tong Hua, how is this guy not exactly like your dead husband?”

2.

Xie Qianyu had been cold-faced and cold-hearted since childhood. Women’s affections and his parents’ attempts to marry him off only annoyed him.

At twenty-eight, he simply went along with his family’s arrangements and registered his marriage to the daughter of his parents’ friend. He became a married man and put an end to everyone else’s fantasies about him.

But only the two of them knew that this was a marriage of convenience, kept secret from both sets of parents. After a year, they would divorce amicably as agreed.

The day after the wedding, Xie Qianyu left to work overseas. He wasn’t transferred back to China until three months ago.

Not long after he took up his new post, Xie Qianyu heard that he looked uncannily like one of his subordinate’s late husbands.

Xie Qianyu frowned. “...Absurd.”

Then he saw her reminiscing about her late husband in front of her coworkers, speaking mournfully with a sorrowful expression. Her colleagues sighed and urged her to move on.

Xie Qianyu stared at her for a long moment, lifted his chin, and summoned her to his office. With an amused scoff, he said, “Your dearly departed husband, whom you loved so much? Tong Hua, did it never occur to you that I might come back?”

Good news: The new boss is her husband ^_^

Bad news: They’re getting divorced OVO!!!

[Bonus Scene]

Xie Qianyu at first, disdainful: “Ridiculous. The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous!”

Xie Qianyu later, wagging his tail: “Honey, can we take our relationship to the next level?”

Reader’s note:

1. The blurb was first drafted on February 26, 2024, and a screenshot has been saved.

2. “Can we take our relationship to the next level?” is adapted from a line in the film The Ghouls. Please contact me if you hold the rights and would like it removed.

3. This is a fluffy urban romance with little regard for logic. Things happen to serve the plot and may differ from real life, so please don’t read too much into it~

Blurb for the next book, Dangerous Boss

“Have you heard? The old master of the Shao family has finally stepped in! The young master Shao has tearfully cut ties with his beloved, and that woman’s dream of marrying into a wealthy family is shattered…”

-

Five years later, Liang Jirou had a fiancé.

The scandalous secret of the wealthy family that everyone once loved to gossip about had gradually become a legend.

Now she was Secretary Liang, diligent at work and getting along with her fiancé as well as any courteous couple could.

Her life was calm and uneventful.

Until the company was acquired and she went to report to the new CEO.

The moment she opened the door, the man seated at the head of the room raised his eyes to look at her, his gaze unfathomably deep.

Liang Jirou froze on the spot.

How could her new boss be her ex-boyfriend’s older brother?

-

Shao Peiyong had been working at an overseas company at the time.

He’d heard that his younger brother had become lovesick over an ordinary girl, carrying on as if he’d die without her.

Back then, everyone in Beicheng said that the young master, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, had suddenly fallen deeply in love and was even willing to defy his elders over it.

Now his younger brother’s former flame stood before him.

Her head bowed, her eyes timid.

She looked nothing like the scheming woman his elders had described.

Liang Jirou wanted to quit, but her fiancé needed her to keep her respectable job and kept urging her to hang on a little longer. She could always quit after they got married.

But after enduring it again and again, she never managed to leave.

Her fiancé would never know.

Every time she worked late into the night, her high-and-mighty, cold-hearted boss would swallow her up with a possessive kiss.

*A stubborn, awkward, delicate secretary × a deeply calculating, scheming boss

Theme: Absurd, yet romantic