The Dream Lover System Has a Bug

The next generation of a middle-class family: the slide down the social ladder begins with having too many ideals.

In this day and age, Ji Haiyin still dreams of becoming a journalist. After graduating with a liberal arts degree in 2009, she heads boldly to Beijing, living on trendy Chinese takeout and sharing an apartment in Tiantongyuan as she drifts through the city. Luckily, when all hope seems lost, her luck finally turns: her parents send her money! "Sweetie, eat less of that cheap group-order food. Your dad and I are worried about you."

Her parents also start asking her, in a roundabout way, whether she's found a boyfriend in Beijing.

Ji Haiyin: "Um... yeah. Well, sort of. Half of one?"

He really is only half a boyfriend. He never appears during the day, only in her dreams at night, so she supposes he counts as half!

For some inexplicable reason, she's bound to a Dream Lover System, and meets a young, rich finance bro studying in the United States in her dreams. He's the textbook trust fund baby finance guy, but he makes up for it with his beautiful face and occasional flashes of genuine vulnerability. He rests his head on her lap and murmurs, "I don't want lots and lots of money. I want lots and lots of love. I want your love."

They fall in love in their dreams, oceans apart. One day, he tells her he's about to graduate and will come back to China to find her that summer.

Then he says, "I managed to get tickets to the Beijing Olympics. Let's go together."

Ji Haiyin: "? What Beijing Olympics? Beijing is hosting the Olympics this year?"

The finance bro furrows his brow. "Well, I didn't mean it, but... the 2008 Beijing Olympics. You don't know? Have you been living under a rock, darling?"

Even more shocking than his usual mean, mean foreign nonsense is the fact that the other end of the dream, his side, is in 2008...

In 2008, she was still in elementary school. She doesn't know what to do with this information, and with work keeping her busy in real life, she becomes a little distant toward him.

But the Dream Lover System takes her change in attitude as a sign that they aren't right for each other, and just like that, he vanishes!

An older man by day, a younger man by night. She gets to switch things up and enjoy both.

The twenty-year-old male lead is a beautiful young finance bro, so pitiful and lovely you can't help but adore him. The forty-year-old male lead is a powerful, high-ranking tycoon who goes mad with love...

The twenty-year-old male lead lets the heroine enjoy his good looks. The forty-year-old male lead lets her enjoy his good looks and his wealth!

After being "abandoned" by the heroine in the current timeline, the male lead goes more than a decade without seeing her. He's now an extremely possessive, seriously lovesick yandere, a classic landmine of a man who's been lying in wait for years. Heh heh heh...

The male lead is sexually inexperienced, and the heroine is his one and only. He doesn't marry or date anyone for over a decade.

Theme: A news-industry workhorse has to keep fighting