Editor Chen, You Lost Your Star

The story alternates between the present and flashbacks.

You can usually tell from the chapter titles whether a chapter is a flashback or set in the present. Flashback chapters are numbered.

Chen Yanning, 35, head of the editorial department at a small-city media center.

He has polio. One leg is ten centimeters shorter than the other and weak, but with a brace, he can work, live, and walk normally.

He had a dysfunctional marriage. More precisely, powerful people forced him into it for their own reasons. They were married in name only, with no real marriage between them.

Li Ran, 26, an employee in the archives department of a Shanghai law firm.

Her childhood home was happy until she turned fourteen.

Li Ran first met Chen Yanning at her mother’s funeral when she was fourteen, saw him for the third time at seventeen, and for the fourth time after taking the college entrance exam at eighteen…

The male lead suffers, emotionally and physically.

The female lead keeps waiting for him to make the first move…