A Late Marriage

Yun Xiang is thirty-five, with no house or car. The balance in her bank account has hovered in the low hundreds for years, and she's in debt on top of that. Money is always tight, and sometimes she even has to pay her rent a few days late. She has thought about turning her life around, but in this world, you need something to push off from, and she can't even find a decent stepping stone.

She's a late bloomer. What others figure out in their early twenties, she didn't begin to understand until she was thirty. She has been cheated, fallen hard, and been beaten bloody, but she never stayed down. She's independent in spirit and strong-willed, though she gets lazy now and then. Unwashed dishes pile up in her home, and the blankets on her bed go unmade, leaving her life a little messy. She doesn't care. No one's looking, so she might as well be comfortable.

Love? She gave up dreaming about it long ago. No fairy-tale prince is going to ride up on a white horse to save a debt-ridden woman past her prime, and a wealthy family is beyond the reach of someone like her. She's used to being on her own and letting life take its course. If she expects nothing, she won't be disappointed.

But fate has a way of playing tricks.

One evening, she came across a man covered in blood at the mouth of an alley. She could have walked around him, but for some inexplicable reason, she helped him up. And after that, she could never get rid of him.

Hei Yan was just like his name: his heart was as hard as stone. He grew up struggling to survive in the darkness, where betrayal and scheming were part of everyday life. Trust? He'd thrown that notion into the gutter long ago. But this time, he was the one who misjudged things and trusted the wrong person, nearly losing his life as a result.

Yun Xiang saved him, but also got herself into trouble. Two parallel lines that should never have crossed became tangled together, bound so tightly they could never be undone.