A Laughing Stranglehold

Nian Qiuhe was unfortunate, struggling in the dark. Her life was steeped in the dust and clamor of Nanhuang, spent in his savage, chaotic, utterly broken world. When she was seventeen, she met him by the school: that boy brimming with hostility and coldness, standing in the classroom doorway against the light, chin raised as he looked at her with weary eyes. His gaze was dark, disdainful, and impossible for the world to pierce. No one knew that a sandalwood-colored envelope lay in his desk, with a sharpened butterfly knife tucked inside. In a world that mocked him, he chose to smile and reach forward to seize fate by the throat.