[Workplace, two female leads, love at first sight]
A maple leaf falls at a speed of 0.3 meters per second.
It brushes past her sketch, and past every disguise she wears.
Yue Yu first meets Shen Qingci beneath a sky full of red leaves.
The woman, cold to the core, has an undercurrent in her eyes that Yue Yu cannot read.
She grips her paintbrush, her heart pounding, yet still musters the courage to offer the feelings she has kept hidden for so long, even though she knows there are so many things between them.
Shen Qingci's fingers tremble.
She has seen too many people draw close only to leave, and learned long ago to reject them before they can go.
But this girl, with vulnerability hidden in her eyes, leaves her unable to say no.
She has tried to push everyone away, but this is the one she cannot bear to lose.
Between them lie eight years, social convention, and an old wound still raw with blood.
She fears holding her back, so she keeps her distance.
She fears she is not worthy, so she holds back.
Though her heart is so stirred she cannot sleep at night, neither dares to be the first to say, “I like you.”
The red leaves fall and return, return and fall.
She paints her longing into video game characters.
She builds her tenderness into the terraces of her architecture.
Not a single “I love you,” yet everywhere, “I'm here.”
This is not a whirlwind romance,
but a hand, offered carefully by two lonely people to one another.
Will the person beneath the red maples never return?
This time, beneath the red maples, she returns, and her longing has found its home.
Red leaves are the preface and fate is the chapter. A tender and tugging two-way redemption, the love hidden in the late autumn maple is restrained and long-lasting. The red maple leaves in the world are always there every year, but it is a pity that the person you love is hard to meet every year. The tenderness and a touch of sadism in the words have long lasting power, and all kinds of lovesickness are pinned to the red leaves.