[Secret crush becomes true love × playboy in name only, devoted in truth × groveling pursuit]
Lin Wan's sketchbook held Jiang Yu's image for seven years.
From the fleeting glimpse in a high school hallway to the casual tenderness he showed after becoming her brother's close friend.
He would hold an umbrella over a stray cat in a downpour, yet laugh at his buddies and scoff, “Dating is such a hassle.”
Then came that ridiculous bet: “Get Lin Wan to fall for you in a month, and the winnings are yours.”
Jiang Yu smoothly worked his way into her life: buying her limited-edition art supplies, staying up late with her to finish assignments, even keeping watch by her side all night when she had a fever. Lin Wan knew it was dangerous, but still gave him her heart. “All right. Let's be together.”
The sweet illusion ended when she heard him joking through a closed door: “It was just a bet to fool a little girl. Who would take it seriously?”
She tore up the wedding-dress sketch she'd drawn for him and disappeared into the crowd.
The storm began to rage.
The former playboy stopped working to search for her. He waited three days in the pouring rain in an ancient town, clutching the portrait she'd drawn when she was seventeen even as a burning fever left him near death.
He learned to make hangover soup and burned his hand. He auctioned off his graduation project to start a fund for stray cats.
Trembling, he laid bare the wounds of his past: “My coldness was armor. You're the only weakness I have.”
When Lin Wan's art exhibition opened with its final piece, The Lighthouse and the Storm, Jiang Yu walked toward her, eyes red, holding the unopened “overdue love letter” in her hand. “Is it too late for me to learn to be your lighthouse?”
