First Love

The day I met my online boyfriend in person, I discovered he was mute.

The boy pressed his lips together, his face pale, nothing like the cheerful person he had been online.

[I’m sorry. I must have disappointed you…]

He handed me the note without daring to meet my eyes, while I stared blankly between his face and the floating comments in midair.

[I’m dying. The male lead set up his own brother and practically sold him out just to get revenge for the female lead.]

So the beautiful mute boy before me was the campus heartthrob’s younger twin brother. He had never been the one dating me online at all.

I curled my lips into a smile, utterly unconcerned that they had switched places.

A mute boyfriend was perfect.

He was adorable when I bullied him and he could not even get a sentence out.

[Were you satisfied with today?]

The message popped up on my phone just after I got home. After admiring the boy’s swollen lips and damp eyes one more time, I sent over our selfie.

[Very. But next time we kiss, baby, it would be even better if you didn’t tremble.]

It took a long while for the person on the other end to reply.

[I didn’t do well today. Let’s meet again tomorrow.]

At our wedding, Duan Yingze’s first love showed up in a bridal gown to steal the groom.

“Duan Yingze, if you still love me, come with me.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, he took her hand.

He left me alone to face the pity and ridicule of every guest in the room.

Everyone thought I would be devastated, that the pain would destroy me.

What they did not know was this: The one I had never stopped loving had come back too.

Duan Yingze was nothing but a poor substitute.

I no longer cared about him at all.

I spent ten years loving my childhood friend, and he spent the same ten years finding me unbearable.

Then one day, I finally had my way with him—and left two hundred yuan behind.

Humiliated beyond measure, my childhood friend hunted for me everywhere.

But I made sure he never found me.

I hid from him for three years, until my father died and left me with no family.

His parents told me, “From now on, our home is your home, and that boy is your big brother.”

I looked at the face that went mad with shame and fury the moment he saw me, and called out brightly, “Hello, Big Brother!”

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.

I was the lowly maidservant Xiao Yu found too filthy to even spare a glance.

But on the day he realized I had feelings for Xie Lin’an, Xiao Yu abandoned his heavily pregnant favored consort.

He seized me by the throat, his voice cold enough to chill the bone.

“Mutual affection, is it? You think you and Xie Lin’an can run off and live happily together? Keep dreaming!”

I am the most pathetic pervert alive.

After a year of crushing on the class heartthrob,

I finally couldn’t suppress my urge to spy on him anymore.

So I installed a cheap camera in his home.

Less than three hours later, the camera ran out of battery and shut off.

I tried to send him a creepy message:

-I like you I like you I like you I like you

Before it could even send, my phone notified me that my service had been suspended for unpaid bills.

Because I was broke,

I was forced to become an upstanding person.

Until one day, when I opened my door,

Xie Yu was on my bed, half-dressed and tied up with rope.

When he saw me come in, he even deliberately tightened the ropes, looking pitiful as he said,

“You don’t like me anymore, Xiaocui?”

Back when I was at my most innocent, I wanted the person I had a crush on to remember me.

So I kept deliberately controlling my scores, making him come in second in our grade for three whole years.

He got desperate and asked me out, trying to throw me off my game.

I agreed with a smile-then turned around and dumped him before he could dump me.

The good news: he really did never forget me for the rest of his life.

The bad news?

Years later, when I applied for a job, he was the interviewer.

He tossed my résumé aside without a second thought.

“This one won’t do. Next.”

To surprise my online boyfriend, I secretly traveled thousands of miles to his university.

When I arrived, I happened to see him coming back to campus from outside.

I was just about to go up and say hi when he walked right past me without so much as a glance.

?

A moment later, my phone buzzed.

“Holy crap, babe. I just saw someone who looked exactly like you.”

“But you’re the only one in my heart, so I didn’t even spare another woman a second look.”

I was so mad I laughed. Right then and there, I snapped a selfie in front of the school gate and sent it to him.

“Maybe try taking another look?”

In my dreams, I kept giving myself over to wild passion with a man.

One day, I finally saw his face.

It was Li Jici, the icy Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review, a man said to have no interest in women.

When my brother is falsely accused, Li Jici mocks me for begging him for help—yet that very night, the man in my dreams is more passionate than ever.

Only after a drunken guest reveals the peach-shaped birthmark on Li Jici’s chest do I realize the truth: the beautiful dreams we have shared belong to both of us.

My best friend pinned me against the windowsill when my heat struck without warning.

My whole body went weak, my breaths burning, like a fish dragged onto shore and left gasping for air.

He held my restless body down, a dangerously enticing smile curling at his lips.

“Beg me, and maybe I’ll consider sneaking in a little bite.”

I gazed at him through misty, tear-bright eyes.

“Please~”