Lessons on Raising a Partner - Chapter 40 - Can’t you hug me?

This is a tale that distorts the scenario of an otome game.An orphan girl named Alicia is attacked by a woman trying to steal her body to become the “heroine”. From the fragmentary knowledge she acquires, Alicia learns that this world is the stage of an “otome game” in a “world of sword and magic”.Having learned the truth from the knowledge she obtained, the immature Alicia dismisses the otome game as “nonsense” and runs away from the orphanage to escape the fate of the “heroine”.A villainess aims to take her life. A fake heroine appears. Alicia trains herself using the fragmentary knowledge she has gained in order to survive, growing into the “Strongest Assassin” that is feared by both the Thieves’ Guild and the Assassins’ Guild.

In the second year of the apocalypse, Du Yue died alone, killed by apathy and exposure to extreme weather. Somehow, she opened her eyes to find herself not only alive, but also back when it was three months before the apocalypse. Despite the surprise, she thought about the upcoming disasters and upheavals. First, it was the fog that carried a virus that stayed for a month.

Then, global temperatures rose to over 120 degrees, evaporating most of the world’s water and melting all the icebergs. After that were level-10 earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, permanent eclipse, and avid rain… and that was not all, because after global warming, came global freezing. As temperatures dropped to below negative fifty, the savagery humans displayed was far worse than any imagined horrors like zombies! Knowing what was coming, Du Yue sold off her family property and used the pocket dimension her mother left her to hoard as many resources as possible, so that she could survive the apocalypse. Meat? Grain? Oil? Spices? Weather gear?

She bought everything! Steaks, French fries, spaghetti, and canned food must all be stocked up! To He Xing, the male lead, she was a god and the key to surviving the apocalypse! Having thought of the apocalypse, Du Yue sold off her family property and used the pocket dimension her mother left her to hoard as many resources as possible, so that she could survive the apocalypse. Meat? Grain? Oil? Spices? Weather gear? She bought everything! Steaks, french fries, spaghetti and canned food must all be stocked up! To He Xing, the male lead, she is a god and the key to surviving the apocalypse!

Xu Ke, the live-in son-in-law who had always been humiliated in the Lin Family, suffered countless indignities in this prestigious household.But who would have known that he was actually the heir of a top-tier wealthy family in the capital? When he inherits the family business, those who once scorned him can only look up to him.

In a world where power is marked by glowing runes and monsters bleed through the fabric of reality, **Ryu** is nothing—an orphan with no name, no status, and no hope. Beaten down by nobles who wield their divine-given strength like a whip, he survives on scraps and stubborn defiance.But when a black rift—an anomaly unlike any ever recorded—appears in the dead of night, Ryu faces a choice: die a beggar, or risk everything by stepping into the unknown.Inside, he finds a nightmare. Kolasis, a legendary predator, hunts him through a twisted forest. The rules here are simple: kill or be killed. To survive, Ryu must forge himself into something sharper than the claws of monsters and crueler than the nobles who cast him aside.Yet the rift has its own secrets. The same power that could make him a legend might also break him—if the monsters don’t tear him apart first.