They bought him new outfits. Simple. Clean. Nothing flashy.
Still, heads turned.
He noticed. She pretended not to.
In the car—well, tricycle—ride back, she laid out the rules.
“This is fake,” she said firmly. “No funny ideas.”
“Define funny.”
“No touching. No feelings. No crossing lines.”
“Understood.”
“And don’t lie too big,” she added. “Just say your family owns a small company. A few hundred thousand a year.”
He nodded.
Inside, his phone buzzed again.
This time he answered.
“Prepare a wedding gift,” he murmured. “Thirty million. From the company.”
A pause.
“Chairman,” Secretary Li said carefully, “how long do you plan to keep pretending?”
“When it stops being interesting,” he replied.
He hung up.
Across from him, she was staring out the window, unaware that the man she’d hired to fool her family controlled an empire.
He watched her quietly.
Kindness like hers was rare.
And rare things, he’d learned, were worth protecting.
Villages have memories.
They remember who borrowed rice and never returned it. Who married well. Who didn’t. Who left for the city and came back with nothing but an accent and borrowed confidence. They remember everything—especially embarrassment. Especially failure.
That’s why, the moment they stepped off the tricycle, the air shifted.
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