Married A Man I Hate - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Escaping a Wedding on a Snowy Night

“I am Fu Li, your fiancé…”

“I don’t want to get married.”

Yue Qingfei sat in the back row of the car, wrapping a white scarf around his head. “I am only 19 years old, and yet I have to marry an old man I’ve never even met. I don’t want to.”

“What do you mean ‘old man’? He is only 26 years old, just seven years older than you!”

Yue Qingfei yanked down the scarf. “But he is a ‘capitalist demon’ who took advantage of his father’s critical illness to return to the country to fight for the family property, bully his stepmother, and is cruel, ruthless, and solely profit-driven… Uncle, you said all of these things yourself over the phone.”

The man was choked up by his words.

“What do you understand about matters in the business world? The company is in trouble right now. As long as you marry him, the company will be saved. It wasn’t easy raising you to be this big; a person needs to learn to be grateful.”

Yue Qingfei’s round eyes drooped sorrowfully, looking like a puppy that hadn’t learned how to bite people, able only to sulk silently.

Since his parents passed away in a car accident when he was six years old, Yue Qingfei had lived with his uncle and aunt. For the sake of “gratitude,” he could do a lot of housework, sleep in the small attic, eat a little less, and spend a little less, but he did not want to sacrifice his marriage.

He had someone he liked.

Although Yan Song had disappeared from his life along with the end of summer, Yue Qingfei knew that they would definitely have a day of reunion. Therefore.

“Yue Qingfei…!”

Yue Qingfei jumped out of the car. His pink figure was gradually swallowed by Jinggang’s December wind and snow.

…

A cherry plunged into white wine.

A guest picked up a wine glass, looking around at the people attending the engagement banquet in the banquet hall. “The invitations were only sent out yesterday, yet so many people were able to come today?”

“This is giving face to the Vice President of our Fu Group. He increased overseas performance by 320% in just half a year; he is practically a walking money-printing machine. Who wouldn’t want to fawn over him?”

“Ha, isn’t he being set up right now? Marrying a man, how is he going to fight for succession rights in the future without children?”

Suddenly, several people stopped talking. At the same time, they took their hands out of their pockets, stood up straight, and looked toward the man walking over.

The man was tall and handsome, elegant and poised. The gold-rimmed glasses and the diamond clip on his deep red tie cast a faint, soft light. Holding a bouquet of white camellias, he approached with measured steps.

Several people nodded in greeting: “President Fu.”

Fu Li smiled gently, nodded, and walked toward the main doors of the banquet hall.

The night wind whipped across his face, carrying snowflakes.

“Will he like you?”

Standing under the veranda, Fu Li extended a finger clad in a black leather glove and gently brushed the pure white petals. The movement was so gentle it was as if he were caressing a crybaby’s cheek. “Probably.”

Anxiously anticipated, the Yue family’s car finally stopped.

Fu Li’s hand gripping the bouquet tightened for an instant, and his steps moved forward uncontrollably. Although with his current status, he shouldn’t be too enthusiastic toward an arrangement-marriage partner he was meeting for the first time.

But, that was Feifei.

Fu Li’s breathing fell out of rhythm half a beat before his sweeping, fruitless gaze did. The car door swung open; on the back row seat, there was only a white scarf abandoned by its owner.

Yue Qingfei had escaped the wedding.

A wave of commotion broke out at the entrance of the banquet hall.

People who received the news were all waiting to watch the excitement. The Yue family, on the brink of bankruptcy, had failed to grasp the final life-saving straw, and actually dared to give Fu Li a difficult time on such an important occasion as an engagement banquet.

According to the ruthless methods Fu Li had used over the past half year to clean up the group’s internal factions, neither the Yue family nor that kid who escaped the wedding would have any good fruit to eat [good outcomes].

Unexpectedly, under everyone’s astonished gazes, Fu Li picked up the scarf and personally drove his car out into the snowy night.

The estate was located in a remote area. Inside the thick, accumulated snow were bare, black branches. Amidst a world of black and white, the pink figure crouching under a streetlamp was particularly eye-catching.

Fu Li looked at that blurry silhouette in the heavy snow. His heart drummed like a mallet, and his hands holding the steering wheel gradually tightened.

He unbuckled his seatbelt, picked up the scarf and the bouquet from the passenger seat, got out of the car, opened an umbrella, and walked with large strides toward Yue Qingfei.

A figure cast a shadow over Yue Qingfei.

As if sensing something, Yue Qingfei’s heart thudded wildly. He tilted his head up to look at the tall man who had descended as if from the sky.

The black leather shoes were as clean as new; the suit trousers were ironed straight without a single wrinkle. A black overcoat, a white shirt—the only color on his entire body was that red tie.

A warm red reflected into his eyes behind the gold-rimmed lenses, and the gaze looking toward Yue Qingfei was even gentler.

Such a gaze made him feel both unfamiliar and familiar.

This face was the same, as if a snow angel had heard his wish and sent the person he missed to his side.

Was he dreaming?

Yue Qingfei slowly stood up, not even feeling the numbness in his legs. He just stared unblinkingly at the face of the man in front of him, and called out that name.

“Yan Song?”

A face as pale as the one in his memory, only the black hair was combed backward, revealing the forehead, no longer having the stray hairs that used to be blown into a mess by the summer wind.

“Yan Song…”

Yue Qingfei’s tears fell onto the man’s chest during the embrace. His slender fingers, frozen red, tightly gripped the black overcoat. “You… you really came to find me. I knew it, I knew you would definitely come…”

Yan Song’s heart was beating so fast, even faster than his own.

His Yan Song also missed him very much.

A pair of warm, large hands pressed onto his back. After a brief pause, they hugged him tightly.

So forceful, holding him so tightly, Yue Qingfei only felt a sense of security.

“I came late.”

The man’s deep, magnetic voice carried along with the vibration of his chest. After a long time—so long it seemed he had already accepted that this embrace was destined to end—did he continue: “As your future partner, I should have considered things more thoroughly. For such an accident to happen, I am very sorry.”

What?

Yue Qingfei froze.

Yue Qingfei left the embrace, tilting his head to look at him in confusion. His eyelashes caught a snowflake, making the person in front of him increasingly blurry and increasingly unfamiliar.

“Yan Song, what are you saying?”

“There might be a misunderstanding in this. You have been calling out this unfamiliar name.”

The man smiled, taking the white scarf in his hand and putting it around Yue Qingfei’s neck. “I should first introduce myself.”

He handed out that bouquet of white camellias. “Hello, I am Fu Li, your fiancé.”

The snow under the streetlamp was blown by the night wind like tumbling white hydrangea flowers.

Yue Qingfei’s brain became more and more chaotic.

Fu Li seemed to see through his doubt. He took a step closer, his tone gentle: “I heard that you met with an accident on the way to our engagement banquet. I was very worried. I understand your hesitation and fear, but please believe that I will not harm you…”

“How could you possibly not be my Yan Song?”

Most of Yue Qingfei’s face was hidden by the scarf, and his eyes in the wind grew redder.

“My Yan Song wouldn’t speak strange words like you do, nor would he wear a suit and glasses, but you two just look exactly the same… Right here!”

Yue Qingfei cupped Fu Li’s face with both hands, stood on his tiptoes, leaned over, and stopped at a distance that was on the verge of a kiss. His index finger gently rubbed past a small black mole blocked by the lens.

“He has a mole here too. How could there be such a coincidence?”

Yue Qingfei was focused on confirming that mole. Their breaths interwove, and his delicate fingers were still continuously caressing the man’s face.

Fu Li lowered his eyes, staring at his crimson, moist lips, and said slowly: “I’m sorry, but I am indeed not the person you are speaking of.”

Yue Qingfei raised his eyes. The outer corners of his soft, round eyes seemed to droop even more severely, and his dark pupils looked as if they were soaked in water, gazing at him ignorantly and aggrievedly.

The polite and proper smile that was always on Fu Li’s face disappeared for a brief instant amid Yue Qingfei’s grievance.

“You are him.”

The bridge of Yue Qingfei’s nose felt sour. He tilted his chin up a bit, the tip of his nose brushing past Fu Li’s lips, drawing even closer, facing Fu Li in a posture that was practically asking for a kiss. “I command you, quickly admit that you are my Yan Song.”

Just at this moment, high beams from a distance shot over.

Fu Li raised his hand to block it for him, but it still pierced Yue Qingfei’s eyes, making him squint. Like a cat that was afraid of light, Fu Li really wanted to kiss him.

Really wanted to.

“President Fu! President Fu!”

The uncle’s voice came over.

Only then did Yue Qingfei come back to his senses. President Fu, Fu Li—this man who looked exactly the same as Yan Song was his future husband—

A cruel, ruthless, and solely profit-driven bad person, how could he look exactly the same as Yan Song?

With a “snap” sound, Yue Qingfei pushed away the umbrella Fu Li had tilted toward him.

“I hate you…!”

Thousands of pieces of wind and snow surged between the two of them, like a snow-globe that had been overturned—complex and chaotic, making it impossible to even see each other’s faces clearly, completely becoming strangers who were within arm’s reach.

Been hated by Feifei.

Fu Li lowered his eyes, placed the hand holding the white camellias back down at his side, turned around, and looked at Yue Wangzong who was running over.

Beside them, Yue Qingfei’s tears accumulated more and more, about to fall in the next second. But he really did not want to do any more stupid things in front of Fu Li. He lifted his foot to leave.

Fu Li’s hand shot out rapidly, catching his wrist. “Where are you going?”

Yue Qingfei tried to shake off his hand to no avail. He simply took off his coat, throwing it onto the ground along with the scarf Fu Li had tied for him.

Don’t want it. Things that a hated person has touched, I don’t want any of them.

Yue Qingfei held his own arms, leaving by taking deep and shallow steps in the snow.

Incomparably stubborn.

Fu Li was stunned in place.

In front of outsiders, Yue Wangzong always wanted to display his authority as a parent, especially when this person was Fu Li.

“Yue Qingfei, stand still! Try taking one more step if you dare!”

Fu Li frowned, cutting him off sternly: “Why are you yelling at him.”

Picking up the clothes and scarf from the snow, Fu Li quickly chased after him.