Warm Boiled Water

I won’t abandon this novel. Even if nobody reads it, I’ll finish it. I’ve just been really busy lately.

Bright, gentle, sweet-on-the-outside-but-cunning-on-the-inside girl × cold on the outside, warm on the inside, and a hypocritical double-standard guy

Wen Zhixu, the school belle of Affiliated High, excels academically, comes from a well-off family, and carries herself with easy grace. She is at the center of everything happening at school, the ideal girl in countless boys’ hearts.

Xie Yubai, who competes with her for first place on the honor roll, is her opposite: taciturn, often wearing a cold expression, and always distant toward everyone.

Wen Zhixu has been pretending for more than a decade. Her social grace is an act, and so are her gentleness and friendliness. But she repeatedly drops her act in front of Xie Yubai. He knows all about her two-faced nature, her temper, and her sharp tongue.

Everyone says the school belle of Affiliated High seems gentle on the surface but is actually hard to approach, and that she ignores all the boys who try to get close to her.

As if to test her, Xie Yubai appears. He even becomes her deskmate, as well as the biggest obstacle in her quest to rank first.

Wen Zhixu has secretly been obsessed with both hands and voices for years. Xie Yubai has a face that can captivate anyone, and even Wen Zhixu, who doesn’t consider herself a beauty addict, can’t resist him.

But Wen Zhixu is who she is. On the surface, she still acts as if nothing can faze her.

Some students secretly ship Xie Yubai and Wen Zhixu, and every so often they go wild over the two of them on the school’s message board.

But why is everything taking such a strange turn? The two of them seem to have fallen out. The shippers are crying, while their individual fans are cheering.

Later, the two make up, but things still don’t go back to the way they were. Everyone assumes that a mountain can’t hold two tigers, and that a clash between two top students is bound to spark.

The two argue endlessly over the answer to a difficult problem. Wen Zhixu tosses down her pen, and Xie Yubai gives her a cold look.

They compete over who can rank first. She makes a sarcastic remark, while he keeps a blank face. When they look at each other, it seems like sparks are flying.

Wen Zhixu laughs at Xie Yubai for getting only two points on a Chinese reading-comprehension question. Xie Yubai says the logic in Wen Zhixu’s physics solution is flawed.

It isn’t until later that a promise note falls out of the reading-comprehension workbook Xie Yubai often looks through: “Wen Zhixu will never get mad at Xie Yubai again without saying a word.”

The handwriting is unmistakably the same as the exemplary essay hanging on the wall, and the signature at the bottom is Wen Zhixu’s.

Shippers: I knew it was real!

Students in the advanced class and other classes who are in the know: We’ve had to keep this bottled up for so long.

Advanced class students who don’t know: What? Weren’t they rivals? So all that competition for first place was just flirting?

The high school portion is a little longer.

The pacing is actually pretty fast, but the romantic tension lasts a long time. They don’t get together until college.

Content warnings:

Neither lead is perfect.

There will be female rivalry, male rivalry, and all kinds of chaotic competition, all of it revolving around romance. There will be supporting male and female characters, and both leads are written as being popular with everyone.

The high school and college settings are fictional, so don’t overthink them. This is my first time writing, so there are lots of flaws, and I’ll be making revisions as I go.

Theme: Study hard and keep improving