Small-Town Engagement [Marriage Before Love]

Blurb: Two strangers marry first, then fall in love

*

Xu Li and Cheng Ji marry because of an arranged engagement.

Everyone thinks Cheng Ji respects and cherishes her. He has a good job, a handsome face, and a gentle temperament. By any measure, Xu Li has gotten the better end of the deal.

Fortunately, Xu Li is easy to get along with too. Whenever he asks her opinion, she has none of her own and is happy to let Cheng Ji decide.

She's wonderfully good-natured.

Only later does Cheng Ji learn that it's not that she has no temper. There's simply someone else who lets her be her true, uninhibited self.

With him, she's distant and polite.

They might as well be roommates sharing a bed.

A friend who married for convenience advises him, "It's only an engagement. If you can get along on the surface, that's already great. Why care about truly falling for each other? You each do your own thing. Isn't that better?"

Unfortunately, Xu Li comes back to retrieve something and overhears him.

His friend is instantly embarrassed, but Xu Li doesn't mind. "It's fine."

She's truly "considerate."

*

After living apart for several days, Cheng Ji thinks he can be just as indifferent.

But night after night, he tosses and turns.

Until "that person" returns.

Watching the two of them standing side by side, Cheng Ji smiles, though inwardly he nearly grinds his teeth to dust. He can't keep pretending to be a gentleman.

Everyone says he's noble and refined, the very image of a gentleman.

Only Cheng Ji knows the truth:

He's no gentleman, and he has shameful desires of his own.

[Reader's Guide]:

1. Xu, a world-weary puffer fish longing for freedom, x mature, "considerate" Mr. Cheng

2. A true marriage-first, love-later story, with plenty of angst

3. Important! The male lead suffers, then has to win his wife back

4. An urban fairytale about real people, all with their own flaws

Theme: Love is written in the stars