MTL - A Smile from the Villain - ~ 13 mysteries

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

Rex was an ordinary salaryman, resigned to a dull life of monotony in a towering megacity. But his world shatters when he’s conscripted by Nexum Dynamics, a ruthless megacorporation, and thrust into a brutal war for a barren, alien world. The planet holds unimaginable riches, but it’s also swarming with the Krhyssari, an insectoid race that dominates the surface with their hive-mind precision and relentless aggression. Amid the carnage, Rex had an extraordinary encounter with Cleo, an ancient AI, a survivor of a long-extinct civilization. Cleo isn’t just an artificial intelligence; she’s a consciousness imbued with memories of her people’s interstellar empire and equipped with advanced bio-nanotechnology. Offering Rex a new purpose and unmatched power, she transforms his fragile human body into a hybrid of living metal and flesh, making him the ultimate weapon. But Cleo is more than a tool of war. As she journeys alongside Rex, her cold, logical algorithms evolve, shaped by his humanity. Together, they form a bond that transcends the boundaries of man and machine, discovering love in the midst of chaos. As Rex and Cleo fight for survival, they uncover a shared ambition, to rise as intergalactic overlords, uniting or conquering the galaxy.

Genius prodigy ​Ji Yu married the icy ​CEO Gu Yan out of gratitude, assuming their union was a temporary transaction. Wrong. While she breezed through their sham marriage, Gu Yan—her “husband-in-name-only”—quietly rewrote the rules.Post-divorce, Ji Yu thrives: clubbing with models, sipping champagne, and flaunting her freedom. ​Post-divorce, Gu Yan implodes: stalking her parties, hijacking her dates, and growling, “Try replacing me. I dare you.”But fate laughs at their feud. On the night their divorce is finalized, a reckless encounter ignites—hotter, messier, and utterly unforgettable. Now Gu Yan, the once-detached tycoon, is addicted to the wife he never truly let go.“Marry me again. Legally. Shamelessly. Forever.”“No. But thanks for the one-night souvenir, Mr. Ex.”

I don’t know how to write an introduction. The few times I wrote it before, the more I wrote it, the more ugly it became. Let’s keep it simple:

This is a Marvel fan novel, with a little added Hong Kong manga elements, if you haven’t read Hong Kong manga, it won’t affect the reading experience.

- Description from novelbuddy