White Cinnabar [Broken Vows, Mended Hearts]

The full novel is complete. Writing is hard, so please support the official release.

My next novel, Green Grapes [Rental Apartment], is now open for preorders.

Food, sex, and love | Rekindled romance | Emotional push and pull | □□ fiction

Jiang Tingyu and Xu Zhouye shared a secret during their school days.

In public, he was a dazzling prodigy admired by everyone, while she was a nobody no one noticed.

Even walking side by side, no one would connect these two people, so similar in identity yet so far apart in status.

Yet in a dim corner, the two who supposedly had “nothing to do with each other” were kissing.

“Still mad?” Xu Zhouye casually stroked her hair. “Make it up to me, and I’ll help you get even.”

Jiang Tingyu nestled obediently in his arms and rose on tiptoe to kiss the corner of his lips.

While her biological father and his family were bullying her, Xu Zhouye could easily get his hands on their leverage.

“Be a little more proactive, and I’ll tell you where he is.”

Jiang Tingyu gazed at him with pitiful, dewy eyes.

Such a well-behaved little cat. Everyone in the know understood that she would tolerate anything he did to her, without limits.

She came whenever he called and left whenever he sent her away.

She was his most devoted simp.

Xu Zhouye truly believed that.

Xu Zhouye thought that controlling Jiang Tingyu was as easy as playing with a doll.

She couldn’t escape the blood tie to her biological father, and Xu Zhouye could even hold that man in the palm of his hand.

Xu Zhouye believed his demands were modest:

He crooked a finger, and Jiang Tingyu would come running into his palm.

He gave his hand a little shake, and she would cry for him.

They were both birds trapped in cages, but the worlds they lived in were utterly incomparable.

The helpless Jiang Tingyu could only depend on him.

Just as Xu Zhouye was feeling thoroughly pleased with himself,

Jiang Tingyu quietly slipped out of his control one day.

Only when his world collapsed with her departure

did he finally realize she had planned her escape long ago.

When they met again, Jiang Tingyu was standing beside Xu Zhouye’s rival.

At a glittering banquet, he watched them lean close to talk, their fingers entwined.

The high-ranking Mr. Xu wore a calm expression, but the knuckles gripping his wineglass had already turned white with tension.

Seeing that familiar face pressed against another man’s, seeing the hand that once curled around his little finger clasping another man’s, he wanted nothing more than to devour Jiang Tingyu whole.

What terrified Xu Zhouye even more was realizing that Jiang Tingyu wasn’t the one who couldn’t live without him.

He was the one who couldn’t live without Jiang Tingyu.

Her dependence on him had never meant she was submissive.

He was the one being played in the palm of her hand.

Jiang Tingyu gave him a cool glance. The hatred she had once hidden beneath her love was no longer concealed.

Sometimes, all she had to do was give Xu Zhouye a little of the emotion he wanted, and he would do things she couldn’t do herself. Why not take advantage of that?

On the night he learned the truth, Xu Zhouye spent a long time alone, thinking through every tactic he could come up with.

Then he got into his supercar and, without hesitation, stole Jiang Tingyu’s boyfriend right out from under him.

“Is he as rich as me? Is he as good at taking care of you? Is he better at pleasing you than I am?”

Jiang Tingyu shut him out.

Yet in the still, windless night, she sent someone a message.

Half an hour later, Xu Zhouye appeared at her home.

“Let’s begin, Mr. Xu. Show me what tricks you have up your sleeve tonight.”

*

Everyone knew Xu Zhouye had a white moonlight in his heart.

Only Xu Zhouye knew Jiang Tingyu was the cinnabar mark branded on his heart.

Note: Both leads are each other’s first. The male lead will do anything for love. Some melodrama.

Blurb screenshotted on November 4, 2024.

---- Preorder: Green Grapes [Rental Apartment] ----

Wang Shan had lived in the mountains all her life. Her days were spent looking up at the towering peaks.

Then one day, her mountain carried her out of the mountains.

Li Guxing gave Wang Shan a home.

Their first home was less than ten square meters. There was only room for her wardrobe, his desk, and their little bed.

And yet it held so, so much love.

“Li Guxing, I put your shirt out to dry. Now it won’t smell musty!”

Li Guxing smiled. He didn’t tell her that a white shirt would turn yellow in the sun. He simply wore black shirts from then on.

“Li Guxing, I want some of the landlady’s grapes. The green ones look delicious.”

Li Guxing looked up at the grapevine laden with fruit and vowed that when he had money, he would let her eat her fill of every kind of grape.

Later, he moved her out of the rental apartment in the middle of the night, then snuck back to pick the only bunch of green grapes the landlady had grown.

Li Guxing wanted to leave everything about that rental apartment behind. In the end, he realized he had lost Wang Shan.

In the damp, moldy apartment, he unexpectedly found the diary Wang Shan had hidden away.

He opened it to the first page. She had written:

20xx, x month, x day

The rental is so cramped, and the landlady is so mean.

The bed is so small he can’t even stretch his legs out when he lies down.

His broad chest held me from behind,

and he gently patted my belly and apologized.

I turned my head and kissed him,

and told him it was okay.

Theme: Joy is born from pain.