The Tough Truck Driver's Sweetheart

A single room in a workers' dormitory, split in two by an old folding screen.

On one side is Wen Hui, a young tailor who ran away from an arranged marriage. On the other is Yan Bin, a rough-edged truck driver.

They had only pretended to be husband and wife to get her household registration, and agreed on three rules to keep their distance.

When Wen Hui suggested they sleep together, the man gritted his teeth and held back. "Wen Hui, I don't want you to do this just because you feel grateful to me."

But when someone gave her a hard time, he would stand behind her with a wrench in hand. He would slap all the money he earned driving onto the table in front of her. And when anyone bullied her, he would rush back in the middle of the night to stand up for her.

"If you lay a finger on my wife, you'd better ask whether the wrench in my hand agrees."

She held the copper thimble her father had left her. She could mend the thickest canvas, but she couldn't stitch her own chaotic, racing heartbeat back into place.

He drove the winding mountain roads with both hands on the wheel, afraid of no danger, but terrified of meeting her reddened eyes and moist lips.

She called him "Big Brother Yan" every other word, yet when her small hand pressed against his chest, it took forever to pull away.

He kept saying they were just "sharing a life," but after a day and a night on the road, the first thing he did when he got home was check whether she was there.

The coal stove grew warmer and warmer, while the boundaries they kept grew thinner and thinner.

Eventually, in their room, at the guesthouse, in the truck... the rules they'd set at the start were all torn to shreds, stitch by stitch.

Their fake marriage turned into true love, and the warmth the rough-edged man had held back for half his life finally drifted over the folding screen, carried on the coal stove's smoke.