Slice of Life

Qiao Xiaohe knows from the beginning that Jiang Haozhi is a wealthy heir pretending to be a poor delivery worker.

Lonely and exhausted by debt, she accepts his false romance because even borrowed companionship feels like a gift.

But when the truth comes out, Haozhi discovers that his game became real for him long before Xiaohe was ready to choose herself.

Walking away gives her the chance to build a life where happiness is something she creates, not something she begs another person to provide.

I tried to persuade my best friend to break up eight hundred times, but in the end, I attended her wedding and drank her wedding wine.

On the wedding day, I sat at the main table with the guy’s strategist, both of us checking our phones and comparing notes.

We realized that every time the couple threatened to break up, it was always the two of us who got dragged into it.

Our chat histories were eerily similar.

[We broke up. This time it’s for real.]

[But what about him/her? What should I do?]

Guy’s strategist: [Maybe you should change jobs. You’d make a great clown in a circus.]

Me: [Pay me some compensation.]

During my first year of graduate school, I hailed a ride and ended up in a Maybach.

That was when I met a man.

And from that moment on, the trajectory of my life was changed forever.

After Gu Li gives up on years of one-sided love for Jing Yan, a shared vision tells them that he will one day bleed for her on a snowbound mountain—and that she will confess first.

But when he ignores her coming-of-age birthday and remains silent, Gu Li refuses to wait for a future that demands all the courage from her, while her cheerful deskmate Pei Zhaoyan quietly turns every gift, joke, and promise into a different possible ending.

When I first started dating Xie Mingchen, he had absolutely nothing to his name.

My friends all told me not to be a fool. They said that with my looks and background, I could find any wealthy man I wanted; there was no need to suffer alongside him.

Now that he’s become the high-flying President Xie, a darling of the venture capital world, those same people say I only won out because I made my move early.

They claim that with his current status, surrounded by women of every shape and beauty, I wouldn’t even stand a chance otherwise.

Even my mother has switched sides. She keeps telling me to lower my guard and learn how to act vulnerable. She warns me not to spend all these years with him only to end up with nothing.

I couldn’t help but snap back, “If he doesn’t bring up marriage, am I supposed to beg him for it?”

“That stubborn streak of yours is going to be your downfall!” My mother sighed, frustrated by my lack of initiative. “What else are you going to do if you don’t play along? Are you really going to let someone else enjoy the shade of the tree you planted yourself?”

I didn’t want to argue; I just felt wronged.

Why was it that in this long-drawn-out relationship, I was the one who did the hoping and the one who felt the disappointment? And now, I was still the one expected to drop hints and nudge him into finally taking action.

My husband thinks I’m one of those women who bleed their husbands dry for their brothers and sisters. What he doesn’t know is that my “eldest brother” is actually the son I gave birth to at nineteen, my “second brother” is the son I gave birth to at twenty-five, and my “little sister” is the daughter I gave birth to at twenty-eight.

The year I turned seventeen, my wealthy birth parents brought me home.

They hemmed and hawed before saying, “You also have a twin brother and a younger sister, but they…”

Judging by their attitude, I understood at once.

My brother and sister probably weren’t going to welcome me.

But in the next second, the door was pushed open, and a flamboyant figure strode in.

His hair was dyed a bright red, and he said with cheerful swagger, “So this is my little sis, huh? I dyed my hair red just to celebrate you coming home. Festive enough for you?”

Behind him followed a little girl with side-swept bangs, holding pomelo leaves, a peachwood sword, and yellow talismans.

“Sis, I got these from a master specially for you. They’ve even been consecrated. They’ll drive away all your bad luck!”

“…”

Every family has its own difficult story. Mine had two volumes.

My rich-girl deskmate introduced me to a summer part-time job: tutoring her younger male cousin.

She said he had masochistic tendencies.

The harsher I was with him, the better he listened.

So I raised my Meow Combo Punch.

“Dharma Cultivation Sanda!”

I disciplined that cousin straight into the advanced class.

The rich girl stared at the school bully in shock.

“Which cousin of mine have you been tutoring?!”

While I was playing with my cat’s tail, the B-king school heartthrob suddenly video-called me.

“Stop touching him.”

“That part of me… I think it has an Empathy Link with your cat’s tail.”

I didn’t understand, so I asked him, “What part?”

His face flushed scarlet. Abandoning all dignity, he simply tilted the camera downward.

Holy crap. Was I even allowed to see this for free?

Was he hiding a bottle of mineral water in his pants?

My archenemy found my Empathy Doll.

I went to get it back from him, only to unexpectedly see a barrage of comments.

[Come on, crush me with that body of yours!]

[Nothing beats watching archenemies get hot and heavy. Delicious!]

That night, I was too terrified to sleep.

I couldn’t stop imagining my arms and legs being smashed to a pulp before I was tossed into a wok and stir-fried over high heat.

But just as my nerves stretched to the breaking point…

I felt someone tenderly press a kiss to my fingertip.