[Small-town angst | devastating romance | mutual salvation · BE]
[Bad-boy school bully × sweet, gentle girl]
When Xiang Nuan was eighteen, she followed her mother, who had remarried, to Jianglin County.
There, she met Song Jinan.
Everyone said he was a good-for-nothing who would never amount to anything.
But Xiang Nuan knew he was the purest light hidden in the mud.
He was stubborn and sharp-tongued, always snapping at her, yet quietly shielded her from every storm.
Two boys starved for love had finally managed to piece together a home.
But fate struck without warning. An accident took both their parents.
On the day they parted, the boy tried to sound proud, though he was full of self-doubt:
“If you’re leaving, then go. Don’t waste my time!”
Her stepmother treated her badly, and her biological father was too weak to stand up for her. On a freezing winter night, she had nowhere to go.
He traveled a thousand miles to find her, and pulled her back with red-rimmed eyes:
“If nobody else wants you, I do. I’ll take care of you from now on!”
From then on, the two orphans depended on each other.
He worked hard to earn money by day, shouldering the crushing weight of life.
She bravely went after her dreams and confessed in her own quiet way:
“Song Jinan, let’s get into Huaqing together!
“You’re wonderful. You deserve a bright future, and you deserve to leave this place with me.”
He shed his disguise, turned his grades around, and finally saw hope after hardship. Dawn was just ahead.
Later, the cicadas sang through the last days of summer.
The boy would remain forever in the summer of his eighteenth year.
The breeze in the little county town was gentle, yet it trapped two of the most unfortunate souls.
We weathered every hardship, but never lived to see autumn at Huaqing.
