Night Performance

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Calculated approach / contract romance / intense push and pull / groveling after the breakup / five-year age gap / mature leads

[A calculating, flirtatious artist x a dark, devoted CEO]

The first time Chen Ji met Zhou Baihan, she got into the wrong car.

"Mr. Zhou, she's a college girl! And pretty, too!"

The man replied coolly, "I didn't notice."

"Don't pretend. I saw you two looking straight at each other just now!"

The man looked up. "And?"

"Was she pretty?"

He didn't even raise his head. "I didn't pay attention."

They met again at Chen Ji's art exhibition.

Everyone in their circle knew he liked collecting paintings.

The man stood before a painting, his hands in his pockets. "I really like this painting. Would you be willing to sell it, Miss Chen?"

He paused as he looked into her eyes, then continued, "Name your price."

Ning Shanzhen built a business from nothing alongside Chen Ruzhong. Once he had made it, he and his mistress conspired to frame her for cheating on him during their marriage, forcing her to leave with nothing. She became depressed and was in a car accident.

That was the first time Chen Ji learned that evidence was worthless in the face of power.

She needed someone to back her, someone even more powerful than Chen Ruzhong.

"Mr. Zhou, I want to make a deal with you."

"What can you offer me?"

"Me."

He struggled to keep his emotions in check, his eyes bloodshot. "You think I don't know what you're up to?"

The next time they met, he sent a message through his driver: "Mr. Zhou wants you to come upstairs."

"Tell him I'm not coming."

"Mr. Zhou says the deal you brought up before is off if you don't come up."

That night, they sealed the deal.

Before leaving, Chen Ji said, "I won't be the other woman. Our relationship ends automatically when you get a fiancee."

Later, he took her to Switzerland to see an exhibition, and only then did Chen Ji learn that he already had a fiancee.

"Why did you bring us both here? Or is this your thing, Mr. Zhou? Do you like watching two women fight over one man?"

They were both strong-willed. Once they got going, neither would back down.

"I was clear from the start: our relationship ends automatically when you get a fiancee."

"I never agreed to that."

Later, his fiancee came forward to explain that theirs was only a formal family-arranged engagement. They didn't like each other, she said, and Chen Ji had nothing to worry about.

Zhou Baihan tried everything he could to keep Chen Ji by his side.

In the years they were apart, Chen Ji became famous overseas and thrived in high society. She returned home to hold a solo exhibition.

Many businesspeople and artists came that day.

Dressed in red, her smile bewitching and radiant, she gently clinked glasses with Zhou Baihan. "Mr. Zhou, long time no see."

The man smiled faintly. "Five years. It has been a long time."

Content warnings:

1. Both leads have only been with each other. The heroine was never kept by anyone; she only pretended to be, to make the male lead jealous.

2. The fiancee's engagement is purely a family arrangement. The male lead doesn't love or like her, and neither does she. She has someone she likes. In short, neither of them has feelings for the other. One lives overseas and one in the country, and at the start they hadn't even met face-to-face.

The male lead is not a scumbag! He's not! [Zhou Baihan]

3. The plot takes the lead in the first few chapters, and the second heroine has quite a lot of scenes.

4. Happy reading~

Theme: Rely on yourself rather than others.