Six Thousand Kilometers of Sea and Sky

[Dual female leads + road-trip story + devoted to each other + sweet bedtime fluff + very slice-of-life!!!]

At five in the morning by the sea, a barefoot girl in a pink gauze dress wanders into the frame of travel blogger Qin Zheyu's camera.

It is the third hour since Jian Zhiteng ran away from her wedding. She fled the hotel in her bridesmaid dress, snapped a heel on the beach, and now has nothing but the car keys her best friend pressed into her hand, along with one instruction: “Run. Run now.”

One is the “obedient daughter” her family ignored for twenty-six years, breaking her father's orders for the first time. The other is a travel blogger used to setting out alone, who has filmed the whole world but never the person she wants to keep. The two women, whose paths would never have crossed, collide in each other's lives because of a van, six thousand kilometers of road, countless gas stations, and sunsets.

Qin Zheyu teaches her how to use a camera. The first photo she takes is a profile shot of herself. Jian Zhiteng learns to edit videos and secretly watches Qin Zheyu's footage over and over. They fall for each other among the fireflies in a village in southern Anhui, care for each other through a feverish night on the western Sichuan plateau, and awkwardly say “I like you” beneath the stars in the Gobi Desert. Both are in their first relationship in their twenties, and they even have to pretend to lose their balance just to hold hands.

This is a road of escape, and also a road home. When Jian Zhiteng finally stands downstairs from Qin Zheyu's apartment and is welcomed into the arms of her lively family of three, she suddenly understands: some people are born to meet, and some meetings mean never having to part again.

“I used to think I was fine on my own,” Qin Zheyu says. “Then I met you and realized that fine is fine, but now I know what better feels like.”

Thirty days, six thousand kilometers, a healing journey that begins with an escape