Marriage first, love later + lifelong single + a reserved, secretly passionate doctor
At twenty-seven, Xia Youyou, a Chinese teacher in a county town, is dragged by her mother to a blind date every week. It’s like going through a trial! This time, the woman across the table says she’s “too settled and has no ambition.” Just as Xia Youyou is stewing over it, she hears a man behind her grumble, “My blind date asked to see my salary account.” She turns and meets He Zhiyu’s smiling eyes. The two fellow blind-date refugees exchange WeChat contacts and make a quick getaway. But a month later, her mother drags her to meet a “good young man we know well,” and when the door opens, it’s the surgeon she’d been grumbling back-to-back with that day! Xia Youyou is stunned. “Are we... still going on this date?” He Zhiyu smiles. “Why not just get our marriage license and save ourselves the trouble of another disaster?” They marry first and fall in love later. Their late-night bedroom talks go from “How should I revise my lesson plan?” to “How difficult is surgery?” One night, when Xia Youyou is grading papers late, He Zhiyu wraps his arms around her from behind. “Teacher Xia, would you count it as extra credit if you taught me how to love you?”
