[The full manuscript will be finished before publication. If you're interested, please add it to your favorites.]
1.
In a luxury apartment in the city center, neon lights glitter across the floor-to-ceiling windows. Looking up, you can see the city's landmark buildings.
Li Zhiyu glances at the man in front of her, or, more accurately, the boy. A hint of amusement flickers in her long, narrow fox eyes. "What are you here for?"
The boy's gaze shifts. He lowers his eyes to hide his humiliation and replies in a muffled voice, "I agree to what you asked for that day."
Li Zhiyu is nonchalant. "Agree to what?"
The humiliation in the boy's eyes nearly bursts forth, but the next second he drops his head in defeat. "Agree... to your terms for sponsoring me."
His voice is hoarse and strained, as though saying those few words might cost him half his life.
Li Zhiyu gives a soft laugh, steps forward barefoot, folds her arms, and sizes him up. Her gentle voice carries a cruel edge. "But I've changed my mind!"
The boy jerks his head up, disbelief filling his eyes. His lips move, but no words come out.
Her perfectly manicured nails trace his jawline slowly downward, barely brushing his neck before stopping at his collarbone. The air is heavy with unspoken restraint. Li Zhiyu taps his collarbone twice, like the final notes of a piano piece.
"You can go."
She turns her back, making her meaning clear.
Li Zhiyu admits that at first, she only said those teasing words because all the rich young ladies in her circle had a younger boy in their care, and she wanted one too.
The boy doesn't leave. He stands before the enormous floor-to-ceiling window, his thin figure out of place against the glittering neon lights.
Naturally, Li Zhiyu thinks of the bamboo in front of her childhood home.
It trembled lightly in the wind, on the verge of breaking.
"If you want me to, I'll do my best to become someone you like." The boy's voice is urgent.
Li Zhiyu laughs softly.
2.
Xie Yingxing has no idea what Li Zhiyu is thinking. She made the offer first, then turned him down after he agreed.
After he moves in, she doesn't ask him to do anything for her. When he thinks she's good, she does something bad; when he thinks she's bad, she does something so kind it makes his heart tremble.
Rationally, he should hate her for taking advantage of his vulnerable position, but emotionally...
Torn between the two, Xie Yingxing thinks bitterly that one day, he'll make Li Zhiyu experience what it's like to be at someone else's mercy.
Just as he begins to think they'll spend their lives scheming against each other, he suddenly hears that Li Zhiyu is getting married. Her future husband is said to be the unattainable first love she longed for as a girl.
Xie Yingxing feels like a fish that's swallowed the bait. The angler has been toying with him, and he didn't even realize it. Worse, he had smugly thought he was playing her at her own game.
Watch her marry someone else? No way!
After everything Li Zhiyu has done, she thinks she can just walk away? He's been suffering, and he'll make sure she suffers too.
Years later, Xie Yingxing finally rises to the top and returns home in glory.
Eventually, a friend can no longer stand his behavior and says:
"So all that boundless hatred of yours amounts to not letting her eat? When you made that threat back then, I thought you'd block off every way out for her and make her taste what it was like to depend on someone else!"
Xie Yingxing, no longer wearing the air of a boy, sits on his desk. His metal-rimmed glasses glint coldly as he reads through documents without looking up. "What do you know? I have my own pace."
His friend: "..." Your pace is to hold a rope and follow her around.
A wealthy heiress with a complicated background x a sharp-tongued, low-born student from a poor family
Male lead, older woman-younger man romance. He is 18, she is 23.
The leads have a sponsor-and-beneficiary relationship, not a master-and-slave relationship. Every character in this story has good and bad sides; none are perfect. Readers who are extremely attached to particular characters, please steer clear.
Theme: You have to love yourself to love others better
