The Fussy Female Lead Is Everyone's Favorite

[Upcoming: The CEO Novel's Villainous Fiancée Refuses to Be Cannon Fodder]

Blurb:

Ruan Youwei is a delicate little flower.

She's the only girl among her generation of the prominent families, and she's been doted on by everyone since she was little. As a result, she's spoiled and willful, can't stand being touched or crossed, and won't tolerate the slightest grievance.

Even after entering the entertainment industry, she makes no effort to rein herself in and has ranked at the top of the Most Hated Actresses list for years.

And yet she was blessed with a beautiful face: bright eyes, pearly teeth, fragrant skin, and jade-like features. She's a delicate flower who really did grow up spoiled in a life of luxury.

She dazzled everyone with a fleeting glimpse in her debut film, stunning and otherworldly like the goddess Luo descending to earth. One dance made her a legend. Even the antis waving banners that said "Get out of the entertainment industry" both love and hate her.

Then, after an accident, Ruan Youwei learns that she's merely a substitute female supporting character in a melodramatic romance novel: the male lead has loved her because she resembles the heroine.

The man she's been chasing sees her only as a substitute for the heroine. He's cold and annoyed with her, while secretly loving the heroine with restrained devotion.

The leads' tortured romance lasts eight hundred chapters, and her purpose in the story includes, but isn't limited to, serving as a stepping stone that brings them closer, providing connections for the male lead and resources for the heroine, and, when necessary, acting as a shield for their secret relationship to protect them from the storms of showbiz.

Unaware that she's only a substitute, she devotes her whole heart to the male lead, spending money and doing favors for him. In the end, everyone sees her as a wicked supporting character and the one ruining the leads' relationship.

Then she gets punished by the heroine's admirers for scheming out of jealousy, and ends up destitute and dying a miserable death, dragging down everyone around her.

Ruan Youwei: Her? A substitute? Jealous of someone else?

That's outrageous!

I, Ruan Youwei, am one of a kind! I will never be anyone's substitute!

*

When Ruan Youwei was little, a handsome but taciturn young boy came to stay with her family.

Even then, she was the little princess everyone held in the palm of their hand: spoiled and precious, someone to indulge and pamper. Anything she liked, she had to have. Anything she disliked, she wanted gone.

So naturally, she ordered the handsome boy around, played pranks on him, and frightened him. No matter how unreasonable she got, though, he would only stare at her sternly and say very seriously:

"You can't do that."

How rigid and strange.

Like a toy she was playing with, he was just a passing fancy. Ruan Youwei soon forgot about the handsome but boring boy.

But the boy kept following her around just like before, quietly watching her play with other people and patiently picking up her scattered toys.

Then, one midsummer, the boy had to go home.

The day before he left, Ruan Youwei promised she would see him off.

But that day, she went out and played all day, completely forgetting about her promise. It wasn't until she got home that evening that someone told her the handsome boy had waited for her under a tree, standing in the scorching sun for a long time.

Before he left, he asked someone to give her a letter.

His name was written in the lower-right corner:

He Qinian.

*

Ruan Youwei doesn't see He Qinian again for ten years.

The once-naive, awkward, and rigid boy has grown into a decisive and calculating figure of power in the world of wealth and fame, a man entirely different from the boy she once knew.

Meanwhile, Lin Yan is still as willful, spoiled, and trouble-prone as she was in childhood. She's offended half the entertainment industry, incurred widespread outrage, and is being condemned all over the internet.

To outsiders, the two of them seem like the last people who could ever be connected.

Then, at a reunion with childhood friends, someone jokes about the old days and brings up the name that feels both strange and familiar.

Remembering her pranks and the promise she broke, Ruan Youwei shakes her head without hesitation and says, "We don't know each other."

But as the gathering breaks up, she unexpectedly runs into the man who's been waiting at the corner.

After a brief moment of eye contact, the man lowers his gaze and puts out the cigarette in his hand. A faintly careless smile plays at his lips as he stares straight at her and says pointedly, "Don't know each other?"

He Qinian has never forgotten that midsummer when, after his family fell on hard times, he stayed briefly at the Ruan home. The girl stood barefoot on the soft grass outside the door, watching a feather caught in the wind. When she turned and unexpectedly saw him, she waved and smiled, bright and radiant.

After falling from the clouds and sinking into the mire, that was the warmest smile he had ever seen.

From then on, that smile, along with the spoiled and willful girl, became a restraint deep in his heart, something he would never allow himself to touch.

The heroine is spoiled, willful, and a bit of a brat. She's not perfect. 1v1.

[Blurb written on January 1, 2024]

Upcoming Story

The CEO Novel's Villainous Fiancée Refuses to Be Cannon Fodder

Synopsis:

Ji Yan is madly in love with Xie Chen for ten years before she learns that she's just the villainous fiancée and female supporting character in an old-fashioned CEO romance with a chase-your-wife-to-the-crematorium plot.

She's arrogant, willful, conceited, and unreasonable, but she comes from a top-tier wealthy family and grew up adored by her parents and older brother. Using her status as the male lead's fiancée, she targets and harms the heroine in every way she can, pushing her down the stairs, causing her to miscarry, and doing everything in her power to be evil.

In the end, she drives the heroine to flee overseas, setting off the classic melodramatic plot of running away while pregnant. Three years later, the heroine returns with a genius child. They bump into the male lead at the airport, and he orders the entire city of A to be turned upside down until they find the mother and child.

With the genius child's help, the leads reconcile. The male lead finally understands his own heart, turns away from Ji Yan at their wedding, takes the heroine's hand, and announces to the whole world that she is the woman he loves most.

Betrayed, Ji Yan turns her love into hatred and vows to make them pay. But, in an inexplicably stupid move, she kidnaps the male lead's son. He takes brutal revenge, driving her family's company into bankruptcy. Her father jumps to his death, her mother passes away, and her only brother hates her to the core, letting her end up homeless and fend for herself.

The novel runs for over ten million words and 9,298 chapters, with just about every required ingredient of an old-fashioned CEO romance, including but not limited to a one-night stand and contract relationship between the leads, the domineering CEO forcing the heroine to love him, the heroine's tragic past, "You only love my money," "Woman, you're playing with fire," the villainous fiancée making a dramatic entrance just as the leads are about to fall in love, "Here's a check for five million. Leave him now," a miscarriage after being pushed down the stairs, running away while pregnant after getting pregnant again, a genius child, the chase-your-wife-to-the-crematorium trope, and more.

Ji Yan, who's awakened to the entire plot, is now being forced by the story to reach out with an evil hand toward the heroine...

Ji Yan: ???

Would any human being actually do that?

She grew up under the national flag, for heaven's sake! She was one of the top ten exemplary students!

Unfortunately, the plot is so powerful that Ji Yan keeps falling into fits of madness. One moment she's pulling out a check for five million to slap in the heroine's face; the next, she's holding tightly onto the check she's already put in the heroine's hand, making a complicated face as she tries to bargain.

"Could you take a little less? My monthly allowance is only five hundred thousand!"

Five million is ten months' worth of her allowance!

The heroine: ???

To stay alive, Ji Yan walks a tightrope along the plot every day, determined to become an "overage genius child" and bring the leads together.

But she still can't overcome the power of the plot. On the day the heroine resolutely chooses to run away while pregnant, Ji Yan cries harder than the male lead. Ignoring his protagonist's halo, she grabs him by the collar and demands:

"How could you let the woman you love most leave you? Don't you know she's carrying your child?"

The male lead: ???

After another two thousand chapters, Ji Yan, in despair, still puts on a wedding dress and walks toward the last big moment in her story: her wedding to the male lead.

She waits for him to come to his senses during the ceremony, setting off the chase-your-wife-to-the-crematorium plot, with his family reunited while she's forced to lose her intelligence, kidnap his son, and suffer his brutal revenge.

Fortunately, she has already cut ties with her family and tricked her parents into going abroad for their honeymoon.

As the priest reaches the last line of the vows and asks whether anyone present objects, Ji Yan is already prepared to accept what comes next.

But the next moment, someone in the audience stands up and says with absolute conviction, "I object."

Ji Yan turns in shock to see who stood up to object. Then she looks at the male lead, whose face is predictably dark with anger.

The man who stood up seems not to notice the male lead's displeasure. He calmly repeats, "Brother, I said I object!"

Wow...

An old-fashioned romance has turned into a melodramatic family drama in an instant.

One wedding, two grooms.

The male lead's younger brother, who was supposed to love the heroine in secret and help her from the sidelines, walks up to Ji Yan, holds out his hand, and asks:

"Do you want to come with me?"

Should she stay and wait to be humiliated by the male lead and become cannon fodder, or take a chance and leave with him?

That's the question...

*

Xie An has a secret: he's been in love with his brother's fiancée for a long time.

He's so taciturn it's almost excessive, a single-minded and unhinged artist. He's not as dazzling as his brother, nor as full of promise in his parents' eyes.

Whenever his parents and elders talk about him, all they say is, "As long as Xiao An grows up safe and sound, that's all we ask. We want nothing else."

Then, the year he transferred schools, a girl with a touch of worry sat down beside him.

She said, "If only the person I liked were you. You definitely wouldn't hate me."

Of course he wouldn't.

Not only would he never hate her, he'd take her away from his brother.

The heroine and the original male lead are only engaged by word of mouth, with no actual romantic relationship. The wedding isn't real.

The story has all the ingredients of an old-fashioned, melodramatic CEO romance. None of the characters are perfect.

The male lead is taciturn, loves only the heroine, and isn't affected by the plot.

[Blurb written on December 26, 2024]

Theme: You win by daring to fight