Sugar and Sawdust

edikim

Su Wenxi has just lost her job as a pastry designer, and she tells no one. She quietly returns to Yunxi, the waterside town where she grew up, to save her aging grandmother's failing bakery, only to find Gu Chengyan, the quiet carpenter next door and the childhood best friend she left behind without a goodbye. When the old town launches a couple campaign with a prize big enough to repair both their shops, the two sign a fake-dating contract with one firm rule: no real feelings. But the whole street is watching, the clauses begin to break one by one, and a promise from eight years ago comes due. A warm, slow-burn story of second chances and the sweetness of things built slowly.

The Green Warden

Green Onion

Stranded alone on a planet whose surface was scorched into toxic glass sand a thousand years ago, agricultural engineer Arthur Vance turns wreckage into the first living soil humanity has seen on Veridia Prime in generations. His discipline becomes a lifeline—until Sera Kade leads a convoy of refugees to his gates, and the rules that kept his sanctuary alive start to collide with the one thing he never let himself want again.

Saltwater Dynasty

yoochangssi

When marine conservator Marin Yeo restores a pearl hairpin pulled from the wreck of the Lunara, she begins dreaming of Mara Rion — a pearl diver who died betrayed and unnamed eight hundred years ago. Kael Arden, the architect hired to demolish the very site that holds Mara's truth, dreams of being the man who arrived too late to save her. As the past surfaces piece by piece, Marin and Kael must choose: protect the legacies they inherited, or destroy them to give a forgotten girl her name back — and give each other a love that doesn't drown.

Two Weeks' Notice to the Abyss

Sleepy Teapot

For six years, Lloyd Vane kept Pandemonium, the deadliest dungeon on the continent, running on time: balancing trap delays, monster upkeep, and mana flow while meeting every impossible quota his commanding officer handed down. Then he files his resignation, buys a crumbling cabin in the Buffer Woods between the Church and the Demon Realm, and plans to spend the rest of his life running a quiet inn with strictly no overtime. Quiet lasts about a week. First comes Elena, the Church's legendary Blade of Light, starving, hopelessly lost, and sworn to avenge the three weeks she once spent crying inside one of Lloyd's looping labyrinths. Then comes General Malina, his former boss, carrying an arrest warrant from the Demon King, the dungeon's runaway core spirit hidden in her luggage, and not nearly enough money to pay for a room. Now the woman who never once said thank you is working his register, arguing with a hero in his living room, and leaving meals outside his door that she insists are asset maintenance. As the inn becomes the only neutral ground on the continent and his replacement pushes Pandemonium toward collapse, Lloyd must face the question he has avoided his entire career: does anyone need him for who he is, and not for how useful he can be? A cozy fantasy romantic comedy about burnout, found family, and a slow-burn romance between a deadpan former dungeon operator and the proud demon general who never learned how to ask for help.

Shattered Horizons

kyunghee

In the underground civilization of Aethelgard, where humanity has hidden from sunlight for nearly a century to survive a photoreactive plague, pathologist Lucan Rhyse has spent his life searching for a cure -- driven by the disease that killed his mother and is slowly consuming his sister. When he discovers Mirelle Sorn, a fugitive immune to the plague whose blood could hold the key to saving thousands, their arrangement is simple: shelter in exchange for carefully measured samples. But Mirelle carries something else entirely -- a neurotoxic compound her body releases under stress, making physical contact between them potentially lethal. Every moment of closeness must be measured in seconds. Every touch is a choice made with full knowledge of its cost. As Lucan edges closer to a breakthrough, he uncovers a truth he cannot bring himself to tell her: the fastest path to saving thousands may require destroying everything that makes Mirelle who she is. And as Mirelle begins, against every instinct, to trust the one man whose research depends on her body, she must confront the question she has carried her entire life -- can someone who needs what you are made of ever truly choose who you are? A slow burn biopunk romance about the impossible distance between saving someone and owning them, set in a world where even love requires a countdown.