The Heart-Racing Clause

Qiu Panyue thought her marriage to Pei Yu was a clear-cut business deal.

He paid for her father's medical treatment, she helped him fend off a family-arranged marriage, and she also got a monthly salary of fifty thousand.

Pei Yu was cold and short-tempered in public, but in private he remembered all her preferences.

She had known him for seven or eight years, but she'd never felt such a strong attraction before.

Even so, Qiu Panyue reminded herself three times every day: Stay calm! It's all an act! He has someone else in his heart!

Until she realized that the legendary "girl in his heart" was possibly, probably, most likely... herself, the same girl who had gotten drunk, kissed him, and forgotten all about it the next morning.

*

In Pei Yu's eyes, Qiu Panyue was a block of wood who just didn't get it.

He'd schemed to get her to tutor him back in high school, then schemed to trick her into marrying him after college. But after finishing her graduate school entrance exam, she was still planning to run away to her hometown on the other side of the country.

Then came that drunken mishap, and Qiu Panyue fled back to her hometown.

Pei Yu pursued her relentlessly. Just like on all those nights over the past year, he tentatively embraced her, his breath brushing her ear. "If you're not pulling away, that means you like me, right?"

Mutual pining | An atypical marriage-before-love romance

An exceptionally unflappable, self-reliant, ambitious sweet girl VS a sharp-tongued, cold-faced, jealous rich boy

[Original blurb written on June 12, 2025]

[Blurb revised on November 10, 2025]

[280,000 words, no paywall during serialization]

[Updates around noon. During ranking events, updates follow the ranking schedule; otherwise, new chapters every other day.]

P.S. 1. The male lead has silver hair, probably throughout the whole story, so no need to worry about it changing color.

2. A light, sweet romance with occasional bittersweet moments and a happy ending.

3. The main story takes place in the city, interspersed with memories of their youth, with dedicated high school bonus chapters.

4. One-on-one romance, both leads pure in body and mind.

Here's the blurb for my next upcoming story, Wild Boat, Self-Rescue~

Xie Jin and Cheng Li first met at the bubble tea shop where she worked part-time.

The girl had a slender silhouette, and during her break she studied vocabulary with a poker face.

Xie Jin and Cheng Li met for the second time at the school flag-raising ceremony.

Cheng Li was making a classroom blackboard display.

With her classmates, she smiled often, though she was still as thin as a reed.

The second time was the one Cheng Li remembered as her first meeting with Xie Jin.

That afternoon, the campus was quiet. Bathed in sunshine, the boy stood casually with his hands in his pockets, his wolf cut wild and untamed.

He suddenly offered to help her write the display. His neat, flowing calligraphy seemed at odds with his whole demeanor.

His light-colored eyes met her dark ones, and she decided he must be easy to fool.

Still, Cheng Li hadn't set her sights on Xie Jin at first.

She had a dream, and pursuing it would take a lot of money.

Her family couldn't afford it.

She tried hard, but kept running into obstacles.

At her most desperate, the Xie family handed her a bank card with five million on it.

After graduating from high school, Cheng Li quietly enrolled at a school in another city. She left without saying goodbye, and was gone for three or four years.

*

She heard that after starting college, Xie Jin had a girlfriend he stayed with longer than any before, breaking the curse of breaking up after graduation. They even seemed close to getting married.

Cheng Li's dream had taken her from a studio to a major company when she saw him again at a business banquet.

He wore a dark suit, his wolf cut unchanged, seated at the center of the crowd and still the star of the show. His light-colored eyes looked at her with a cool detachment she'd never seen before.

The past was like the wind, gone as soon as it was stirred.

Until a few days later, Cheng Li got out of a male colleague's car and found someone waiting for her outside her home.

The red around his eyes showed through the darkness. Big tears fell as he gritted out, "I hate you."

That calligraphy prodigy was famous throughout Xicheng and even across the country. He only ever had one relationship in his life.

From first love to gray hair, from school uniforms to wedding clothes.

During the years they were apart, Xie Jin refused to say he was single because Cheng Li had left without telling him they were breaking up.

A seemingly obedient girl VS a playboy on the surface

P.S. 1. The setting is loosely inspired by around 2016, but it is mostly fictional.

2. Both leads are adults when they get together.

Theme: The seeds of romanticism take root and bloom in the soil of love