She Turned My Fear into a Fluttering Heart

Two people who don’t dare say they’re in love, carefully drawing closer across time. Beneath the iceberg lies moonlight that melts only for her. Shen Qingyue, twenty-four, a specially appointed professor and the walking iceberg of the campus. Gold-rimmed glasses, a black-and-white trench coat, a height of 178 centimeters, and a frigid manner that spared no words had earned her the nickname “the mute beauty.” A socially anxious snail, hiding a heart that once guarded the moon. Chu Yunxi, nineteen, a literature freshman with severe social anxiety. At 164 centimeters, she always wants to hide inside oversized clothes and counts the paving stones as she walks. When the icy professor reunites with her socially anxious student, can moonlight once again illuminate the snail’s shell? At the first class of the semester, random roll call leaves Chu Yunxi frozen with panic in front of Shen Qingyue. One afternoon in the library, a silent meeting of their eyes sends them both fleeing in a fluster. Under a roof on a rainy day, a tilted black umbrella traps two hearts full of words left unspoken. Shen Qingyue carefully reaches out her feelers, trying to make amends in the clumsiest way possible. One of them is silent and distant in real life; the other is candid and vulnerable online. Love is the courage to tread carefully. Watch the iceberg melt for one person, revealing the soft belly of a cat beneath. Watch the snail summon the courage to reach out her feelers again, touching the gentle moonlight she once thought she had lost forever. “The cat doesn’t know that every time the bird flaps its wings and flees, it’s because it once craved the moonlight on its fur, mistaking it for tenderness.” But once the rain stops and the wind dies down, with the moonlight still shining, will the bird dare return to the familiar branch?