I Never Meant to Be Your Childhood Sweetheart

[Mutual Secret Crush] + [Childhood Friends]+ [School Life]+ [Sharp-Tongued, Devoted Hero]+ [Second Chance Romance]

Jiang Ran had a childhood friend named Ruan Yue. She had a secret crush on him, and nobody knew. She loved him with every fiber of her being.

She didn't even like candy, but she would still accept the sweets he gave her, then secretly save the wrappers in a little box. More than a thousand candy wrappers became the most vivid proof of her decade-long crush.

Their homes faced each other. They lived so close, and yet he still seemed so far away.

“We grew up together.”

“She's like a little sister to me.”

That was how he always introduced her to people. Maybe he had no idea how much she liked him. Maybe, in his eyes, she was nothing more than his childhood friend and little sister.

But to Ruan Yue, his little childhood friend belonged to him alone. He wanted to hide her away, his own precious girl and no one else's.

“Jiang Ran.”

“Want to date me?”

The boy never got the chance to say those words.

The wind howled through the night. Sitting on the cold ground as tears streamed down her face, she finally dared to speak the words she had kept buried for so long. “I never wanted to be your childhood friend. Who would want that, anyway? Ruan Yue, all I've ever wanted was to be your girlfriend.”

But the person on the other side of the wall was gone, and couldn't hear her sobbing.

She had walked alone for more than a decade with her secret crush, stumbling on for so long.

She loved her boy so much.

Two cowards never got to welcome the passionate love that could have been theirs.

Later, when she met him again, the man was just as carefree and irreverent as before. With a teasing grin, he called out, “Jiang Ran.”

He tipped up her chin. “Say you were wrong.”