“Take care of yourself. You’ll be in trouble if you get hurt, really.”
The front of the Nonsan Training Center was bustling with young men with freshly shaven heads and their families.
She had vowed not to cry no matter what. But hearing the sounds of sobbing here and there, Si Hyun’s eyes finally grew hot.
“Eat well. If anyone bullies you, make sure to call.”
The young man, nearing 187cm and just twenty years old, had always seemed like a child to Si Hyun. A thin, small nineyearold who was being bullied by his peers on the streets.
“I’ll file a complaint and make sure they get punished… ugh!”
Si Hyun ended up covering her face midsentence.
Seeing the sevenyearold woman, who had grown much smaller than him, burst into tears, Tae Ha looked on with a sorrowful gaze.
“……”
The hand that he hesitantly raised hesitated several times and in the end, didn’t touch her hair but tightly gripped the hem of his poor jumper.
“Just stay still and don’t do anything.”
In the end, what reached Si Hyun’s ears was the gruff voice as always.
“I’ll be discharged soon and will rush to you, just until then.”
Leaving the whimpering Si Hyun behind, Tae Ha turned around.
Watching his retreating figure disappear into the door marked “Patriotic Cradle,” Si Hyun wiped away her tears.
… That was the last moment she saw the child she raised, Yoon Tae Ha.
((()))
Six years later.
At nine in the morning, the smell of strong coffee filled the third floor lounge of Future Bank. Si Hyun, while brewing coffee, decided to prepare several cups for her team members and headed to the office.
“Anyone who hasn’t had their morning coffee yet?”
Entering energetically with a tray, she noticed that all of her team members’ faces had simultaneously turned ashen. It wasn’t like this just five minutes ago?
Si Hyun lowered her voice and asked her coworker, Lee Mi Ju.
“What’s going on? Why is the mood suddenly like this?”
“The US stock market was a mess overnight. As expected, as soon as our market opened, it plummeted. How come every single one is a red light?”
Mi Ju sighed while showing her the stock app screen on her phone, filled with blue numbers.
“The economic newspaper said there’s no chance it’ll rise for the time being.”
Only then did Si Hyun realize the reason for this strange atmosphere. No wonder everyone, from the team leader to the ordinary employees, were staring at their phones with gloomy faces.
“You said you don’t do stocks, right, Si Hyun?”
“Finding a working professional who wasn’t into stocks was rare these days. Si Hyun was the only one in the team who didn’t even own a single share of the common SamSong Electronics stock.
“I don’t even have a stock account.”
“Why not, when everyone else is doing it?”
“I had a friend who was like a barnacle to me.”
At the time, Si Hyun was hooked on stocks. Having blindly bought stocks for fun and then seeing them quadruple in value was the start of it all. The initial investment of five hundred thousand had ballooned to two million.
In retrospect, it was a case of a blind squirrel finding a nut, but at the time, she was thrilled as if she’d become Warren Buffet. Could it be that she was a born genius investor?
And so, she decided to invest a further fifty million, pulling from the money she’d saved from working and even taking out a credit loan. She invested it all into Chinese stocks, which were all the rage at the time.
Exactly three months later, the Shanghai Composite Index recorded a historic crash.
As she stared at the stocks that had been reduced to a tenth of their value, Si Hyun finally understood what Tae Ha had meant when he’d told her to ‘just stay put and do nothing’ before enlisting.
Ah, he meant not to do stocks!
“Wow, you’re saying a twentyyearold foresaw the Chinese stock market crash?”
“He’d always been interested in economics and such since high school. If he was going to give advice, he could’ve been more detailed.”
Regretting her inability to take the advice, Si Hyun sipped her cooling coffee.
“That’s why I’ve not touched stocks since then.”
“What’s he doing now? Has he become a securities analyst or something?”
“I don’t know what he’s up to.”
Si Hyun let out a deep sigh. The last time she saw him was when he was leaving for the army training center. They had exchanged a few letters after that, but all of a sudden, she lost contact with him just when he was about to get assigned to a unit. For six years now, she hadn’t been able to get in touch with him.
Their chatter ended as the team meeting began.
“The new director is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.”
At the team leader’s words, the team members swallowed hard.
People generally thought that working in a bank meant handling money, but in reality, Si Hyun was a UX designer. Her job was to analyze customer behavior and needs in order to provide convenience when developing an app, and to draw the overall design to ensure that the necessary functions are optimized.”
When male lead is the homewrecker
“I know she doesn’t love him.”
I’ve read the novel below twice already. Girls, I’m highly recommending it to you!
The female lead? Not a good person.
The second male lead? Not a good person.
The male lead? Willingly plays the third party, breaking up the female and second male lead’s relationship despite all the warnings from his friends—so yeah, he’s definitely not a good person either.
Basically, nobody in this novel is simple-minded or without scheming.
The female lead starts off as the male lead’s secretary, but don’t worry—later on, she takes over the company while the male lead steps back to support her. He won’t steal her spotlight, overshadow her, or dull her shine.
I love novels where men are out here snatching wigs, tearing each other down, and going to war just to win the female lead’s affection. And this is exactly that kind of novel. Most of Hai Dai Ran’s works have this dynamic. You’ll see the male characters’ emotions being pushed to the absolute extreme.
There’s even a scene where the second male lead exposes the male lead online for being a homewrecker. The brotherhood immediately gangs up on him, dragging him through the mud. I find it compelling —it completely flips reality on its head, where usually, women are the ones fighting over a man and getting torn apart by the sisterhood.
For me, female leads in the novels I read should only struggle in their careers, not in love. But if the brainless romantics in the story are all men? I have zero complaints.
I’ve pretty much read all of Hai Dai Ran’s novels and even translated all of them—her works are just my thing. I’ll slowly upload everything here. One day, when my website is official, I hope I can invite her to join as one of the star authors.
Here’s the story synopsis:
One-line summary: She is his lifelong obsession, to the point where he was willing to be a third wheel, scorned by society, just to wedge his way into her relationship with her fiancé.
Cold-hearted and indifferent female lead + Scheming and subservient CEO male lead
Intro 1:
“I know she doesn’t love him.”
With blood trickling from his clenched fist, Rong Xiu gazed at the woman before him, his eyes clouded with anguish. Hidden in the wardrobe, he had witnessed Fan Xia – the woman he desperately loved – in an intimate embrace with her fiancé. Yet his heart still yearned for her, defying all reason.
Fan Xia, the elegant and composed assistant, carried something mysterious in her eyes whenever she looked at her fiancé, Wen Lan Sheng. Strange occurrences began to surface – secret meetings with the young Gu Jin Yi, an unexplained withdrawal of 5,000 yuan… Then suddenly, her fiancé’s sister, Wen Jing, violently attacked her.
In this matriarchal society, Rong Xiu had risen to become the chairman of a powerful healthcare conglomerate, breaking through gender prejudices. But for the first time, he willingly stepped into the shadows as the other man, disregarding his friends’ warnings to become her secret lover.
Because he had discovered the truth – Fan Xia wasn’t the pure angel everyone believed her to be. And perhaps, he was the only one capable of helping her execute her mysterious plan…
Intro 2:
Rong Xiu’s biggest regret in life was missing out on Fan Xia.
He secretly loved Fan Xia for 7 years.
Watched her go public with her boyfriend.
Watched her kiss her boyfriend at their wedding.
Until that man blissfully nestled in Fan Xia’s arms, obtaining everything he could only dream of.
The crazy jealousy stripped away his hidden secret love, layer by layer, burning like wildfire.
Fan Xia, how can I have you!
【Reading and Trigger Warning Guide】
1. Female dominant, male submissive, male pregnancy
2. Male lead schemes his way to the top, male competition
_____
Please help me, I want to bring you the best possible things.
If you find any chapter or novel with poor translation and editing quality, let me know by commenting directly under that novel or chapter. I will retranslate it as soon as possible.
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