Cohabitation

I picked up a beautiful black snake.

I often held it in my palm, idly playing with it.

Its tail would coil around my arm, the cool sensation so pleasing I could hardly bear to let go.

Later, in the depths of night, that same cool tail wrapped around my waist, my stomach, and my thighs, bringing an entirely different kind of sensation.

My brother went on a trip with a few friends.

Mom told me to video-call him and check in.

The call connected, and the screen filled with a man’s bare upper body, his pecs on full display.

He rubbed his hair with a towel and said casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,

“Your brother’s taking a shower in the room next door. His charging cable broke, so his phone’s charging over here with me.”

I stared at the image on the screen, unable to snap out of it for a long moment.

Then that fair, handsome face suddenly leaned closer to the camera, a wicked smile curving his lips.

“Am I that good-looking? Want to see for yourself in person sometime?”

When I was five, my father brought home a handsome deaf boy and made him my child husband.

I prided myself on being a progressive woman; since childhood, I always told people he was my brother. I never expected that, more than ten years later, one drunken night,

I slept with him – and forgot about it.

The insanely hot guy upstairs is six-two, with cool-toned fair skin and gold-rimmed glasses. He looks aloof and abstinent, but apparently, he’s actually a beast.

The very night I moved in, the upstairs unit went at it all night.

So passionate. So impressive.

It would have been even better if I hadn’t been the one suffering through it.

When they were about to start up again, I finally couldn’t take it anymore.

I opened the property management WeChat group and added the hot guy from Unit 802, Building E.

“Hi, you’re the resident of Unit 802 in Building E, right?”

“Could you two keep it down?”

“It’s so loud I can’t sleep…”

He replied, “I’m working overtime at the office.”

I shot up from my deathbed of exhaustion, suddenly smelling the scent of piping-hot gossip.

The next second, he transferred me eight hundred yuan.

Him: “Bro, help me block the door. I’ll be there right away.”

After landing in a world of beastfolk, I felt an itch and gave it a scratch.

And then—!

I froze, looked down, and lifted my shirt in disbelief.

A second later, I let out a shriek and practically crawled to the hospital.

“Doctor, help!

Something weird is growing on me!”

The doctor booked me in to have it removed.

But that night, I dreamed of a little octopus with tears streaming down its face.

It held up a tentacle with a piece missing and wailed, “That’s my arm!

It ran off to cuddle you.

It doesn’t want me anymore!”

Hang on.

Who taught it to cuddle like that?

After breaking up with Zhou Yanxu, Ying Xu steals his family’s treasured white pet snake and takes it home.

Floating comments soon reveal that her new pet is actually Zhou Ci, the Zhou family’s ancient patriarch—a snake god who has waited thousands of years for her.

As Zhou Ci sheds his harmless disguise and coils himself into every corner of her life, Ying Xu begins to uncover a bond that reaches far beyond her disastrous romance.

Their reunion may have begun by accident, but some promises are written into the soul.

As the oldest unmarried young adult in my family, I had been suffering under the pressure to get married for years.

Eventually, I simply gave up fighting it.

My mom said she was so worried she could not sleep.

So I drove two hundred kilometers overnight, got home at three in the morning, stood by her bed, and pried her eyelids open.

My mom said everyone in the family was laughing at her because I refused to get married.

The next second, I tagged everyone in the family group chat:

[My mom says everyone is laughing at her because I won’t get married. I came to ask, who exactly is laughing at her? @everyone]

My cousin was the first to start a message chain:

[Your little cousin is not laughing at her.]

Then came an orderly line of replies:

[Auntie is not laughing at her.]

[Uncle is not laughing at her.]

[Second Cousin is not laughing at her.]

[Dad is not laughing at her.]

[…]

Jiang Yerao is young, beautiful, naïve, and proud. Even though she knows Ruan Pingshan is only willing to give her money and affection, not an official place by his side, she stays with him because she likes him too much. While enjoying the sweetness of being spoiled, she is also stung by the realities of class differences, marriage, and her own self-respect. Little by little, she realizes that being nothing more than a pampered canary can never truly put her at his side.

With the encouragement of her friends and the push of her career, Jiang Yerao goes from relying on Ruan Pingshan to running her own buyer’s boutique. She learns how to judge people’s intentions, protect herself, and rethink both love and independence. Meanwhile, through her transformation, Ruan Pingshan gradually lets go of his fear of marriage and family relationships and begins to face his own feelings. The two of them pull against each other, misunderstand each other, and test each other along the way, until in the end, they choose each other in a more equal and open-hearted way.

In my fifth year of trying to make it in Beijing, my boyfriend cheated on me with an intern.

The other woman posted his massive pay stub online.

The watermark on the image was clear as day.

He was done for.

As a washed-up actor with no buzz to my name,

I decided to take the plunge and shoot a BL drama for the traffic.

When I saw that my fanservice partner was Xi Sheng, I was dumbfounded.

“You’re a top-tier star. Why are you taking the plunge?”

Later, he held me in his arms, took his time teasing me, and bit my ear with a soft laugh.

“For this.”