Jealousy

After a fight with my husband, I went to my boyfriend for comfort.

Then we got caught.

My boyfriend stepped in front of me and told my husband, “The one she doesn’t love is the other man!”

I said, “Keep your voice down!

Is this something to be proud of?”

I’d had a crush on my best friend’s stiff, proper little brother for years.

To look younger, I always wore fresh, barely-there makeup and bright, cheerful outfits whenever I saw Jiang Heng.

He never so much as batted an eye.

Then came the bachelorette party before my best friend’s wedding.

With my hair in big, man-eater waves, a bodycon skirt, black stockings, and red-soled heels, I cut completely loose.

Afterward, I took my hopelessly drunk best friend home.

The door opened.

Jiang Heng and I stared straight at each other.

The sweet-girl act I’d kept up around him for years shattered on the spot.

Feeling guilty, I turned to leave.

But Jiang Heng, always so cool and scrupulously polite, raised a hand to block the doorway.

“It’s late, Qingzhou.

Why don’t you stay the night?”

I was the heroine of an erotic novel, until the system dumped me into a chaste romance to reform me.

Please.

I went straight up to the male lead and said, “Hey.

Want to kiss?”

He had me thrown in jail for molesting him.

Later, he turned out to be even more outrageous than the men in erotic fiction.

To break his betrothal to my elder sister and marry me, Lu Jin agreed to three conditions.

First, on her birthday every year, he must personally bring a bouquet of pomegranate blossoms to her residence.

Second, if we ever had a daughter, the child must bear her name.

He agreed to both.

As for the third, my sister said she would name it another day.

After we married, it did bother me that he went to her with flowers year after year.

But he was gentle with me, and we were so deeply in love that I could hardly bring myself to complain.

Besides, whenever I showed the least displeasure, he would say, “Once a promise is given, not ten thousand mountains can stand in its way,” and tell me not to ask again.

What truly stuck in my throat was the way he mentioned my sister every time he called our daughter’s name.

She did not live in our house, yet she was everywhere in it.

At last I could bear no more.

I wept and insisted on changing the child’s name.

Lu Jin merely watched me coldly.

“Have you finished making a scene in front of the child?”

He resented my suspicions and grew steadily more distant.

Then my sister sent word of her third condition: he was to help her divorce her husband and bring her home.

I promptly wrote a divorce agreement of my own.

Lu Jin took it with a weary sigh.

“She’s already given up so much.

What more do you want?”

“If she hadn’t stepped aside, I would never have married you.

Had I known it would come to this, she might as well have refused.”

I was reborn on the day Lu Jin came to ask for my hand.

He handed the betrothal token straight to my sister.

“The eldest Miss Xie alone holds my heart.

I wish to take her as my wife and remain true to her all my life.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

A mistaken phone call makes Si Yun order her distant contract husband, Huo Jingheng, to come home before she locks the door.

He obeys—and after an illness brings them closer, the cold businessman discovers how much he wants her care, her rules, and a real marriage.

But meddling parents, a proposed heiress, and the fragile terms of their agreement force them to decide whether their marriage is still a transaction or the home they have both been missing.

I fell in love with my rival—and my roommate.

The good news: she was a woman.

The bad news: she was straight.

On the surface, Pei Ruoqing and I couldn’t stand each other.

In secret, I was practically begging, “Big Sister, slap me.”

We stayed tangled up like that until our five-year college reunion.

After the reunion, I used my drunkenness as an excuse to climb into her car.

When I saw that our old class president was still hopelessly in love with her, I deliberately picked a fight.

She shot back coldly, “He likes me.

Does that really make you so jealous?”

Before I could answer, an out-of-control truck came hurtling toward us.

I threw myself over her without thinking—and died protecting her.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on freshman move-in day, staring straight at Pei Ruoqing as she pushed open our dorm-room door.

Cheng Xi once mistook Yan Jin’s possessiveness for devotion, but his attention fades until she can hear the impatient thoughts he hides behind a perfect smile.

Just as their relationship fractures, Qin Zheng—the dangerously obsessive first love she never truly forgot—returns from abroad determined to reclaim her.

Caught between a boyfriend who realizes too late what he has lost and an ex learning that love cannot be a cage, Cheng Xi must decide which kind of devotion she actually wants.

I am the most unwanted true heiress in the capital.

My mother took one look at the rough, simple-minded girl who had grown up on the frontier and acted as though she wanted nothing to do with me.

She gave me a purse of silver and coldly sent me away. “Consider it your dowry.”

I was about to leave with my head hanging when my elder brother and half-sister stopped me.

My brother saw that I was beautiful and wanted to use me to win over powerful men.

My half-sister thought I was a fool and wanted to keep me as the maid who washed her feet.

My mother burst into tears and tried desperately to drive me away.

That was when I realized she had never refused to acknowledge me—she was afraid she could not protect me.

The servants tried to hold me there by force.

In the struggle, a jade pendant fell from my sleeve.

My half-sister’s face changed the instant she saw it. “Where did you steal this?”

I answered honestly, “A gentleman with an eye condition gave it to me after I saved his life.”

After a blackout leaves Qin Shuyi with swollen lips and three female roommates as suspects, her search for the mystery kisser forces her to confront a tangle of hidden crushes—and the girl who has loved her all along.

I booked an appointment with a specialist for pain during sex, only to discover that the intern sitting behind the kindly old doctor was my longtime crush.

The professor turned around to quiz him.

“He, what usually causes pain during intercourse?”

He Shiyu looked past his silver-haired mentor and stared straight at me.

After a long silence, he answered in a voice cold enough to splinter ice, each word striking like a blow.

“Rough movements.”

“A lack of restraint.”

“Excessive frequency.”

“Mechanical injury.”

The professor nodded in satisfaction and continued, “And what information should we ask this patient for now?”

He Shiyu thought for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice slipped out of control, trembling with accusation.

“Meng Yin, these past two months… who exactly have you been with?”