The Glue Marks Have Yet to Fade

The Glue Marks Remain

This is a long realist novel about cross-border capital spanning Hong Kong and Los Angeles, entangling the hidden currents of entertainment-industry gossip, a twenty-year fixation and romance, and a major US IRS cross-border tax case. Chen Chen, a financier, has been obsessed for half his life with Su Tian, a star surrounded by rumors and mystery about her origins, ever since seeing a blurry old QQ photo from 2007. He builds an intensely private romance on immense wealth: reserving entire islands, flying across oceans by private jet, and shutting out every glimmer of the outside world. Through extravagant transfers, gifts of real estate, and costly medical arrangements, he tries to hold on to an intimate relationship suspended in midair.

Rumors spread through the industry, rivals keep slandering her, and people from the past continue to extort her. Su Tian remains trapped in a whirlpool of gossip where truth and lies are impossible to tell apart. Tenderness and suspicion coexist between them, and their trust teeters on the brink, until a cross-Pacific decision involving fifty million dollars in Los Angeles drives them to a final break. Every romantic gesture, emotional investment, and secret transaction seems like a lavish indulgence by a wealthy patron, but in truth, each one plants the seeds of disaster.

When the fireworks over Victoria Harbour fade and the island's tenderness dissipates, a 90-Day audit letter from the US IRS arrives across the ocean. The vast expenses once used to conceal affection, smooth over scandals, and bury secrets all become traces of evidence in a tax case. When the splendor is gone, love and hate become an account to settle. The most stubborn things in this world are not rumors and gossip, but the glue marks that money cannot wipe away and the rest of one's life cannot erase.