Momo and You [Marriage Before Love]

---- Novel Blurb ----

Originally titled "Mo and the Brocade Banquet" [Marriage Before Love]. If you like it, please add it to your favorites!

The male lead tears open his shirt to beg for your favorites.

[Five-year age gap | Size difference | Icy male lead with heterochromia]

[Marriage Before Love turns into a long-planned scheme | Sweet throughout | Voluptuous, stubborn beauty]

Qiao Mo, a new hire fresh out of college at a major tech company, has her design drafts plagiarized and quits in a fit of anger.

Not long afterward, she makes a dramatic return.

Her coworkers gossip behind her back: "I heard she's involved with the brand. How else could she have gotten her job back so easily?"

Qiao Mo touches the wedding ring on her left hand and smiles.

Then she turns around, splashes coffee all over the gossip, and gets them kicked out of the company.

She only wanted to find a patch of shade and shelter in the scorching city of Nanjiang. Since her husband works for the brand, it was only natural to make use of that connection.

As for why Zhou Jinyan chose her, Qiao Mo neither knew nor wanted to know. It was only for a year, after all.

Later, she runs into her first love. Drunk, she sees two faces alternating in her mind and murmurs, "...Yan... Yan."

Once sober, Qiao Mo finds herself pinned in the corner of the bed, her pajama pants hanging loose around Zhou Jinyan's waist, the lines of his lower abdomen disappearing beneath them.

"Does a secret crush count as love?"

"Did you say yes because of my name?"

Qiao Mo is scared, so she runs away.

The rain in Hong Kong is hot and sticky. Qiao Mo braces herself against the doorway to keep him out. "Why did you marry me?"

The man's eyes turn red, but he can't bring himself to answer.

From the male lead's perspective:

As soon as Zhou Jinyan's plane lands, he gets a call.

"Zhou Jinyan, could you bring me some clothes if you have time? I mean, if it's too much trouble, forget it. It's not that serious..."

He sets down his phone, wishing he could fly straight to her.

At a green light, Zhou Jinyan's car sits motionless in front of all the others.

"What are we to each other? Do we really need to be so polite?"

Qiao Mo cowers in the passenger seat, timidly begging him to drive away.

Later, Zhou Jinyan pushes her to the edge again, and she covers a male figure sketch resembling him in black dots.

He presses his lips together, unbuttons his shirt, takes Qiao Mo's hand, and guides it inside.

"Wife, you drew me wrong. This is what I'm really like..."

Insecure, sensitive small-town girl VS aloof on the outside, warm and loyal CEO

Height difference: 160 cm vs. 185 cm | Age gap: 5 years

Not sure if this counts as a trigger warning: The female lead is not a conventional beauty. She's on the curvy side and doesn't lose weight.

A light, sweet romance.

Updates every other day after Chapter 27.

All plotlines and characters in this story are fictional. Please do not associate them with real people or events.

Thanks to XHS cover designer @Sen Luo

---- Upcoming: "Inedible Landscape" ----

Please add it to your favorites! I'm sincerely asking, really sincerely, as sincerely as if the whole story were already written.

[Five-year age gap | Size difference | Childhood friends | Reunion after a long separation]

[Brothers at odds | Intense push and pull | Reunion from the very first chapter]

Jiang Li always remembered that she had to forget Luo Xu.

She thought she had managed it, until he showed up again.

But she was about to marry Luo Xu's half-brother.

Before the wedding, on a freezing night in Beicheng, she trembled in Luo Xu's arms and held back her tears as she said,

"We... shouldn't see each other again."

His warmth was enough to keep the cold at bay, but she still burst into tears.

Jiang Li is keeping watch beside her fiance's hospital bed when Luo Xu catches them kissing.

It is the most absurd thing that has ever happened in her life.

But one absurd event follows another.

She absurdly kisses Luo Xu, absurdly claims him, and then absurdly leaves him.

Luo Xu, meanwhile, is trapped. He can't get away.

He has never been able to forget one person, or that summer.

He thought the girl was still young and there was plenty of time, until news came from the Shen family that his half-brother was about to get engaged. He races back recklessly...

Only for the girl to run away.

Everyone says Luo Xu, who acquired and restructured the Jiangong Group, is ruthless and antisocial.

He often keeps watch alone over the century-old street that has just been restored, gazing at the sun sinking beyond the horizon.

He is waiting to see if a girl will suddenly appear in the alley after sunset and shout, "Luo Xu, if you don't find me, I won't be able to get home!"

Luo Xu: "This time, I've found you. I'll take you home."

In a cabin buried beneath a blizzard, firelight flickers in the fireplace.

On the daybed, Jiang Li begs over and over. Her lips and hair are damp and tangled, and red marks cover her shoulders.

"Luo Xu, please."

"Please for what? One more time, or are you admitting you were wrong?"

SC, 1V1. While the leads are apart, the heroine has a romantic experience but no physical intimacy.

A landscape cake artist who keeps losing ground X an ancient architecture restoration expert who presses forward at every turn

A soft-hearted, fiery calico cat X a scheming, competitive tabby

A young, innocent crush ripens into a bittersweet, tangled love fifteen years later.

The bonus chapters will be fairly long and tell the story of the leads' summer vacation that year. They won't fall in love as minors; it's just a subtle crush.

Theme: The beauty we lost