Inferior Sincerity

[New Column Novel: The Capital at Night] is currently updating. If you're interested, come check it out!

Novel blurb:

◆ Radiant flirt x self-restrained gentleman / clingy sweetheart x old-fashioned man

◆ An old flame rekindled / a guiding lover / coming-of-age romance / an old-fashioned man breaking his rules for love

"The secret I least wanted anyone to see was my heart."

01/

When Yan Siyue was eight, her parents passed away.

On the day of the funeral, a storm battered Beicheng when someone knocked at the door.

White clothes, a black umbrella, dim streetlights.

The man had a calm gaze. He said he had come at Yan's mother's request, made before her death, to care for the orphan. Everyone recognized who he was and fell silent.

Yan Siyue hid in a corner and watched him part the crowd. Under the wary, respectful gazes of those around them, he solemnly held out his hand to her. From that day on, he became her support.

02/

Song Wenjing was quiet and reserved, hardly an entertaining guardian. But he was composed, modest, gentle, and understanding. Throughout the years he cared for her, he always kept to his place and looked after her in every way.

But as Yan Siyue grew up, she often found his propriety irritating.

She was terribly curious to see what someone as serious as him would be like when he was being filthy.

Eventually, she found out.

03/

All along, Song Wenjing had thought himself unsuited to caring for children.

At this very moment, he still thought so.

Because in his original plan, nothing like the scene before him was supposed to happen.

The girl he had raised was smiling as she tugged at his tie. "I just wanted to see if you really had a clear conscience."

Song Wenjing's face turned cold as he replied sternly, "Siyue, I'm your uncle."

Yan Siyue looked at him, innocent and confused. "Would it be more exciting if I called you Uncle?"

/ "In the end, I had to admit that everything I thought I could control, built up layer by layer, had been lost utterly and completely through one secret indulgence after another."

*

1. Both are virgins, one-on-one, happy ending, with a 13-year age gap.

2. The romance begins after the female lead reaches adulthood. The male and female leads' guardianship is a verbal arrangement made out of gratitude and moral obligation, entrusted by her mother. It is not a formal legal adoption, and they are not related by blood. Because their relationship changes and of their personalities, the leads will be conflicted and torn. Neither is perfect.

3. Tentatively updating at 6 p.m. every day. Plenty of chapters are already written.

● The blurb for my upcoming column novel, [The Capital at Night], is below. Please add it to your reading list!

(O >`ω′< )☆

◆ College girl x powerful aristocrat / gentle and resilient x scheming and sinister

◆ A man in power carefully laying his plans / possessive love / dark romance

"You tear me apart, using your very existence to slowly torture me inch by inch.

And I call this love.

It really is love."

01/

At eighteen, Zhu Yunzheng boarded a green train alone, traveling from a southern town to the capital to attend university.

The capital was a dazzling, decadent place, filled with powerful families. She knew all too well that its glittering world had nothing to do with her.

Until she offended a powerful man and was cornered at the end of a corridor, mud and rain soaking her skirt, leaving her humiliated and miserable.

She looked up to see someone leaning against the railing in a second-floor private room, its curtain half drawn. A few words from him got her out of trouble.

Through the swirling smoke, the man's gaze was as still and deep as an abyss.

Only later did she learn his name was Cheng Yanzhi.

He was the most gracious and well-mannered, yet also the most unattainable, Second Young Master of the Cheng family in the capital.

The powerful scions she had to tread carefully around, never daring to offend, were no more than dust beneath the Cheng family's feet.

02/

Later, Cheng Yanzhi was mature and understanding, gentle and considerate, always appearing at just the right moment when she was in trouble.

He gave her comfort and protection, as well as an enviable yet scorned "status" among others. He showed her a world she had never known and time and again pulled her out of the mud and up into the clouds.

The things that seemed like the end of the world to Zhu Yunzheng were nothing more than a small favor to him.

If she asked, he could always make it happen.

Cheng Yanzhi told her again and again, "Don't worry. I'm here."

So she let herself fall, wide awake, into the carefully woven web, sinking deeper and deeper into the warmth and security he offered.

Yet she knew perfectly well that she was no more than an affair unfit to be acknowledged, a disreputable episode in his perfect life.

03/

The year she graduated, Zhu Yunzheng finally learned that their seemingly fated encounters and rescues had been a lie. What was real was how he had carefully planned every step.

She prepared everything, gave up on this carefully constructed, illusory dream without a second thought, fled the capital, and disappeared completely.

But Cheng Yanzhi had no limits and stopped at nothing.

Like a patient hunter, he interfered with her work, meddled in her life, drove a wedge between her and her new boyfriend, and forced her to return to his side.

In an old alley in the pouring rain, the man draped a coat over her as she tried to run away once more. He gently wiped her disheveled cheek. His voice was as tender as she remembered, but his eyes burned with madness.

"Yunzheng, you should know by now that the outside world is dangerous."

"Come back to me, won't you?"

◆

1. Blurb dated September 11, September 24, and October 21, 2025. It will be polished later. The core premise won't change, but everything else is subject to revision before the novel begins.

2. One-on-one, happy ending, both are virgins, with an 8-year age gap.

3. Old-school tropes, an unhinged male lead, and a whole heap of melodramatic angst.

4. The opening quote is from Qiu Miaojin's Last Words from Montmartre.

Theme: Think, act, and face things bravely