Full manuscript finished. A short novel of around 100,000 words, launching in March 2027. Please add it to your collection!
Chongqing road trip | Love at first sight between strangers
Energetic, sweet-and-spicy girl x cool Japanese-style guy
Cheng Ye was heading home for summer break. The fare was too expensive, so she signed up for a senior citizens' tour group instead. It was dirt cheap.
The young man sitting next to her had a wolf cut and headphones on. His eyes were tightly shut, his lips pressed into a thin line. He looked like one of those melancholy, cool Japanese-style guys.
Cheng Ye's stomach rumbled. She glanced at him and saw an unopened pack of Oreos in his slender, sharply knuckled hand.
"Can I have some?"
The guy managed to crack open one eye and weakly murmured, "Mm."
When he opened his eyes again, Cheng Ye had eaten the whole pack.
"Oh, I thought you were winking at me."
The guy: "..."
Cheng Ye: "Just kidding. I'll give you an orange in exchange."
*
Yuan Suiyu thought he'd really fallen for some fortune-teller's nonsense: that if he went to Chongqing, his bad luck would turn around.
Instead, he wound up on a senior citizens' tour, with rain, traffic jams, a terrible driver, and a tour guide who loved telling painfully corny jokes.
He was stuck in the back row, trying not to throw up.
Then a pretty, clean hand reached out, holding an orange. Somehow, it cured his motion sickness.
*
From Hongya Cave to Jiefangbei, from the Yangtze River Cableway to Liziba, from the stone-paved streets of Ciqikou to the viewing platform at Nanshan Tree, Cheng Ye rode her old scooter with him, winding through every twist and turn of Chongqing's fantastical, eight-dimensional mountain city.
They squeezed side by side onto Qiansimen Bridge to watch the two rivers meet, took shelter from a sudden sunshower in the stairwell of Baixiangju, and snapped a photo together in front of the mottled walls of Eling Factory No. 2.
Cheng Ye's smile was dazzling and unrestrained. Yuan Suiyu's was faint, his wolf cut tossed into a carefree mess by the river breeze.
She dragged him into an air-raid shelter to eat old-style hot pot, mixed his dipping sauce, and taught him to swish tripe seven times up and down. His eyes watered from the spice, but he stubbornly insisted, "Mm, that's damn good."
Cheng Ye was like a summer day scented with citrus, bursting into his gray world in a lively rush.
Athlete girl x male dancer
Blurb screenshot dated May 4, 2026
Theme: Upcoming road-trip novel
