Chapter 1: A Heart-Stopping Collision at the Corner
Xia Wanxing hugged the last stack of design drafts to her chest and hurried toward the publishing house. The September wind still carried the lingering heat of late summer, blowing the wisps of hair at her forehead against her skin and bringing beads of sweat to the tip of her nose.
"Just five more minutes... Please don't close yet..." she muttered, clutching her drawings even tighter. This was the first draft of her serialized comic, which she had spent three sleepless nights finishing. If she missed today's deadline, she might not be able to pay next month's rent.
As she rounded the street corner, Xia Wanxing sped up to dash across before the light turned red. She failed to notice a black car stopped a short distance ahead, let alone the door being pushed open from inside.
"Thud!"
With a muffled bang, Xia Wanxing slammed into the car door, and the drawings in her arms scattered across the ground. Her vision blurred. She instinctively reached out to grab them, but only managed to catch a few by their corners. Worse still, her knee struck the curb, sending a sharp stab of pain through her.
"I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" Xia Wanxing didn't even have time to rub her knee. She hurriedly crouched to pick up the drawings, her voice close to tears. "I didn't mean to..."
The wind flipped the characters on the pages around, and some of them even got smudged with dust from the roadside. Xia Wanxing's eyes reddened with panic. She frantically tried to gather them up, but couldn't get them back in order.
Just then, a pair of elegant hands reached out and gently picked up several pages that had fallen the farthest away. Their owner seemed to handle them with great care, even letting their fingertips brush the paper with deliberate gentleness,
