Full title: A Guide to Rebuilding the Ruins of First Love
Also known as: The Male and Female Leads, Adrift in a Sunset Industry, Find Comfort in Each Other
[Childhood Friends | Love and Parting | Reunion After Years Apart | Rekindled Romance]
[High-self-esteem, highly sensitive, cool woman x genuinely domineering man who pretends to be gentle and is devoted]
[Literary editor at a publishing house x architect who studied abroad]
In our desolate lives,
this was a brief and liberating escape.
Chen Yingyan, dressed in a suit, knelt and kowtowed in a temple, hoping the Matchmaker God would tie a red thread for him. He didn't believe in gods or Buddhas, but for that tiny bit of hope, he pleaded with the clay statue on the altar to make Lin Ran change her mind.
Lin Ran sat beneath a banyan tree wrapped in red ribbons, waiting for Chen Yingyan to wake up sober the next morning and forget everything. Afraid of repeating the past, she wept beneath the red-silk-draped tree. She had to be hard-hearted and stubborn enough to reject Chen Yingyan's love.
Chen Yingyan: "Lin Ran, let's start over."
Lin Ran: "We can't go back."
Chen Yingyan: "But we still have the rest of our lives ahead of us."
They say spilled water cannot be gathered up again, that people can reunite after a long separation,
that some mistakes are repeated, and broken things can be mended.
These are all part of Lin Ran and Chen Yingyan's story.
On the ruins of their first love, they will build a white lighthouse.
(Blurb posted on October 9, 2025.)
Theme: Loving you is where my courage comes from.
