Autumn Leaves Never Wither
Two male leads × Nonlinear narrative × Happy ending × Rekindled romance
That year, the maple leaves blazed red. Huan Yifeng stepped through a carpet of golden leaves and into Chen Huaige’s camera frame. The boy grinned boldly, holding up his instant camera. “Hey, you’re blocking my shot of the autumn light.” From then on, every autumn had a reason to come around: notes secretly passed outside the study room window, roasted sweet potatoes shared on the rooftop, and Chen Huaige playing “Maple” so badly on his guitar that it chased everyone away. They thought autumn would last forever, until the Chen family transferred Chen Huaige to another school in the name of “doing what was best for him.”
Ten years later, Chen Huaige always keeps a window seat open in his cat cafe, while Huan Yifeng’s counseling office never accepts appointments in autumn. When forensic reports from Yin Jingxi and criminal investigation files from Cheng Xiaonian both point to the same case, four young people who once went wild together in autumn realize that some partings aren’t the end. They happen so that the maple leaves can fall all the more dramatically when they meet again.
It turns out we’ve all been waiting for an autumn, waiting for the other to be the first to say, “Long time no see.”
For our co-writing project, I write the third-person perspective, and Jingxi writes the seme’s perspective.
The story uses a nonlinear narrative: N chapters cover the present, and P chapters recall the past.
