Snow Clears Tonight

Blurb:

After Xia Yuan marries Shen Jixue, the woman she has secretly loved for years, the two treat each other with icy courtesy.

Reserved and taciturn by nature, Xia Yuan works as a brand designer and is used to staying behind the scenes.

Shen Jixue, meanwhile, moves through a world of fine clothes and elegant company. As the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine, she is gracious, poised, and impossible to miss.

With jewelry specially designed by Xia Yuan dangling from her earlobe, Shen Jixue is teased by someone. She mouths, "A gift from my wife," her eyes aglow like snow, hazy with affection.

But Xia Yuan knows that "wife" isn't referring to her.

It's a woman who looks almost exactly like her, Shen Jixue's former beloved, the one who got away.

*

Xia Yuan has taken someone else's place only because this is her second life.

In her previous life, Shen Jixue died in a shipwreck while on a honeymoon around the world with her beloved. Xia Yuan forced her to stay by her side, trying to save the woman's fate.

But you can't make a melon sweet by force.

Xia Yuan signs the divorce papers, leaves behind a note she has rewritten countless times saying "Don't take the boat," then boards a cruise ship for Helsinki, determined to protect herself.

That night, the forecast calls for a blizzard.

She goes downstairs to eat and sees Shen Jixue in the elaborate evening gown Xia Yuan designed for her, holding an umbrella and waiting beside the spiral staircase.

"Xiao Yuan." The woman's voice is like melting snow as she pleads, "Could we... not get divorced?"

The tenderness that usually filled her eyes has now turned into a madness Xia Yuan doesn't recognize.

Xia Yuan remembers:

The date Shen Jixue died in her previous life is tonight.

Reserved, gentle designer x outwardly soft, inwardly unhinged magazine editor-in-chief

*A shameless melodrama about the stand-in who leaves and becomes the one true love.

*Perhaps this isn't a linear story.

[Archive screenshot dated 25.10.15]

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