After Running Off While Pregnant, the Substitute Goes on a Parenting Show and Finds Healing Through the Baby

(Read after it’s finished, and don’t get your hopes up. This may reduce the chances of getting hurt.)

Reason I didn’t ask for a leave: Every day, I thought I’d write that day...

At the beginning of the month, I told my friend I was going to finish the novel, but then I took a break and couldn’t get back to it.

My mind is empty, completely drained. I’ve lost the desire to write.

I’m scared of the story so far, and I’m scared to face my readers.

This novel hasn’t reached the date when I can unlock the paid chapters yet, so for now, my goal is to finish it. If I still haven’t finished by the deadline, or truly can’t write any more, I’ll choose to unlock the chapters then.

Thank you. I’m grateful you’ve been with me all this way.

After realizing he was the substitute lover who suffered in a wealthy-family melodrama, the domineering CEO’s love interest, Xi Yunzhou finally woke up.

He signed the divorce papers he’d once been unwilling to sign and ran away.

He took his newborn baby with him.

He changed his name to Xi Yun.

The story’s events became nightmares that haunted him every night.

Three years passed. Xi Yun became insecure and afraid of other people’s eyes.

Later, he joined a low-budget variety show for the money and for his baby.

He was content to be a nobody on the show. Xi Yun’s only worry was that his kid seemed to be working a little too hard, and kept stealing the spotlight.

On the show,

other parents did their best to get their kids to step up and earn higher scores.

Xi Yun tried his best to get his kid to lie flat and be a nobody right along with him, but

When it came to picking a house, Xi Yun chose the spookiest house his kid wanted, and won the best hidden house.

When it came to recreating a dish, Xi Yun helped his kid find a skilled cook, and learned techniques even better than the recipe.

He was supposed to be a nobody, and only his kid was meant to stand out, yet the production crew kept turning their cameras on him.

Later

[This is my wife and child. No one is allowed to fight me for them!]

[Waaah, tell me what number I need to draw to be reborn with a gorgeous dad who dotes on his kid like this!]

[Rewatching it. The kid is certainly shining, but Yun Bao is practically a god descended to earth! How can someone be so beautiful and clever? Waaah!]

With the doting duo of a fair, beautiful dad and a competitive little overachiever, the low-budget show became a hit.

On the second episode, Xi Yun came face-to-face with the ex-husband he thought he’d never see again.

Xi Yun pretended not to recognize the man and kept his distance, but his clever kid saw right through everything.

He spread his little arms and stood in front of Xi Yun, like a dragon guarding a prince. In a babyish voice, the little dragon said:

"Hah, ex-husband! Stay away! I’ll find Daddy a man who’s gentler, more considerate, more handsome, and richer than you!"

Qin Yansheng: ?

Is this really my kid?

After that,

no matter how hard he tried, gritting his teeth and working like a beast of burden to help out on the show, his ex and his kid still wouldn’t acknowledge him. They wouldn’t even spare him a glance.

Their eyes were always fixed on other men, too.

Qin Yansheng: Are they really going to abandon me?

Netizens: That ex-husband has some nerve! He’s blocking my view of my wife!

Reading guide:

The main story is a bit silly.

A little slow to warm up.

Lots of everyday life.

There’s melodrama.

At first, the love interest is somewhat withdrawn and socially anxious. The kid gradually helps him heal, and he heals himself, too. The love interest appears in the middle, then has to win his partner back.

This isn’t a sweet romance. The tags were added before to ride the metaphysical trend, and now that the novel is behind a paywall, it’s hard to remove them.

If you really want to interpret it as sweet, the main character and his kid are sweet to each other the whole time.

"The Sickly Beauty Husband of a Fierce Hunter": A nitrogen-fixing farming and food novel. Blurb:

★★A fierce hunter x a delicate, sickly beauty, with a major size difference

+++++++After nutritionist Xia Qing died in a car accident, he unexpectedly transmigrated into the body of a man with the same name in Lingshui Village.

The man was born beautiful, but had the mind of a child. After he came of age, his father arranged a marriage for him.

But he was frail and sickly. The bumpy journey gave him a chill, and his high fever wouldn’t break. The wedding party thought he had an infectious disease, so they wrapped him in a torn mat and dumped him by the roadside.

The little fool was at death’s door when nutritionist Xia Qing arrived.

Good news: He wasn’t dead. Someone had saved him.

Bad news: His rescuer was a muscular man, well over six feet tall, and fierce from head to toe. Standing backlit in the dark, dilapidated room, he looked like a beast about to devour Xia Qing.

The man advanced step by step. Xia Qing cowered in the corner, and when the man came close enough, he shut his eyes in despair, waiting to die.

But... what he got wasn’t a butcher’s knife. It was a soft blanket. The fierce man draped it over him. His voice was rough and gruff, but his words were gentle: "Your fever hasn’t broken. Drink your medicine."

Later, Xia Qing discovered that although the man looked fierce, he was remarkably steady in everything he did.

The man was a hunter, with no parents and no money. The villagers thought he was a fierce harbinger of bad luck. All he had was a dilapidated thatched hut on the mountain. But he was powerfully built, strong, hardworking, and dependable.

Though they never said it out loud, the hunter genuinely treated him, a sickly weakling, like a companion he was raising.

Xia Qing resolved to win the hunter over and build a good life together. He shared recipes for all kinds of delicious food: secret-recipe soy-braised duck, sizzling-plate duck, cold rabbit, spicy stir-fried rabbit, and lotus-leaf chicken. With the mountains at their backs, they made a fortune, and the little shop they opened in town was packed every day.

The two moved out of the thatched hut where the wind blew through at night and into a spacious house in town. Xia Qing wanted them to sleep in separate beds, but the man wouldn’t have it. He gently clasped Xia Qing’s delicate wrist, his calluses rubbing against it. "This house is yours, and I’m yours, too. You’re not allowed to leave me."

Pre-release 2: "Can the Wealthy Family’s Scapegoat Find Redemption?": A principled, disillusioned love interest x a powerful, chaotic-evil pursuer

★★Yu Xi used to be clueless about a lot of things.

Until his birthday, when someone maliciously smashed a cake into his face and knocked him unconscious.

He suddenly woke up to the truth.

He was the universally hated scapegoat in a novel.

Everything he’d never understood suddenly made sense.

Why would his own older brother, at a family banquet, scold him in front of everyone to defend an outsider?

Why would the younger boy he’d watched grow up rip up his love letter at a mixer and berate him for daring to covet a swan?

Why would his own parents always tell him to be tolerant and understanding of someone staying in their home, and look at him as if he were the one being unreasonable?

Why would his closest roommate take a stranger’s side after meeting him just once, then smash his birthday cake into his face at his birthday party?

He’d endured countless acts of bullying like these growing up.

He was the one who’d been wronged, yet he was the one who got blamed.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t change the way people saw him.

Now, everything had an explanation.

A novel needed someone to highlight the protagonist’s success, kindness, innocence, and friendliness...

And he was that character.

So even though he came from a good family and was driven, he lived like a rat in a gutter: a failure, a loner, hated by everyone.

And in the end, he would be abandoned by everyone, forgotten, and die alone in misery.

+++++++Yu Xi laughed quietly.

+++++++The hopes he’d once longed for beat in his chest, then...

+++++++were extinguished, one by one.

+++++++

People noticed Yu Xi had changed.

He no longer rushed over to them, eyes shining, the moment he saw them.

His gaze no longer held any warmth or hope. It was dull and gray, as indifferent as dust.

His words no longer showed them the slightest affection... No, he wouldn’t even say half a word to them.

Everyone was baffled and furious.

They wanted to do something.

But no matter what they did, they could only watch Yu Xi drift farther and farther away, like a bird that would never return to its nest.

No.

They realized they couldn’t accept Yu Xi disappearing from their lives.

They finally understood their own feelings.

But it was already too late.

Away from them, Yu Xi shone brightly, surrounded by outstanding people.

Business leaders, top scientists, academic stars... People far above their station. Yet all of them surrounded Yu Xi, vying to be his friend or partner.

And they had been shut out forever, left on the very fringes.

No matter how desperately they screamed, not a single sound reached him.

Yu Xi had left them completely and utterly.

(Thank you for reading!)

Theme: Parents are the best role models for their children