Summer's Metamorphosis

[Blurb]

The day Ji Minghe posted a photo of herself with Li Lingzhou on her social media, she received a call from Wei Xinlan for the first time in ages.

"Why him?"

Ji Minghe smiled. "What do you think?"

Li Lingzhou had a face nine-tenths identical to that person's. When she first met him at dusk, she was almost transported back to that rainstorm from her youth.

"I hope it's because you're in love," Wei Xinlan said, "not because you're inexplicably using him as a substitute."

"What about you?" Ji Minghe looked at the wedding photo on her screen and countered. "Did you marry for love, or to keep being your parents' good daughter? Wei Xinlan, without me by your side, you've gone right back to the identity you hate most. What gives you the right to lecture me? Do you even know, "

"Then come back," Wei Xinlan suddenly said. "Wouldn't everything be fine if you came back?"

"..."

"Come back to Jiangcheng. Come back to me."

#

A cassette tape has two sides.

Side A is the mainstream hit. Wei Xinlan is the "other people's child" her parents always talk about: excellent grades, gentle and friendly, and, the year after graduating from a prestigious university, she passed the civil service exam. Then she went on a blind date and married a man her parents approved of. Everything went smoothly.

Side B is Ji Minghe, the occasional noise on the audio track: clear-cut boundaries, cold and sharp, willing to travel a thousand miles rather than return to her hometown. Her first requirement for every boyfriend is a well-stocked wallet.

Ji Minghe was a pop-up ad Wei Xinlan accidentally clicked on while using her study app.

They became friends who told each other everything,

like a well-behaved girl falling for the school bully in an old-fashioned campus novel: it was fate.

#

On the day Ji Minghe went to register at No. 7 Middle School, she was caught in a downpour.

A fancy little car stopped on the bridge, and its window rolled down for the drenched girl.

"Ji Minghe," Wei Xinlan said, getting out and angling her open umbrella toward her. "Get in."

Ji Minghe knew her: Wei Xinlan from the class next door, famous throughout the school for taking on eighteen teachers from the ninth-grade teaching group over her parents' attempt to change her seat.

"No, thanks." Ji Minghe wiped her face, her gaze falling on the hem of Wei Xinlan's skirt as it slowly soaked through.

Wei Xinlan said, "It's fine. My uncle's driving today. He won't tell my parents."

The young man in the driver's seat had warm, gentle eyes. "Come on in, Ji."

[Reading Guide]

1. The two heroines are best friends, with no romantic entanglements between them.

2. The romance focuses on Ji Minghe. The male lead is her one and only, in both body and heart.

3. Realistic fiction with a somber tone. None of the characters are perfect.

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Theme: Friendship that lasts forever.