A cool-on-the-outside, warm-on-the-inside CEO, the beloved one x a sensitive, reserved substitute, the pursuer
When Qi Jingxing runs into Tan Jiashu, the lover of his friend Fu Shuwen, a vice president at a partner company, by the river, his instincts tell him he's getting caught up in trouble. Even so, Qi Jingxing reaches out from his car and pulls Tan Jiashu to safety.
As Fu Shuwen's threats grow more vicious, Qi Jingxing and Tan Jiashu begin living together, even as Qi Jingxing remains busy with work. Qi Jingxing initially thinks this is just an ordinary act of helping someone, but their relationship changes completely as they spend day after day together. When Tan Jiashu finally lays bare what their relationship has become, Qi Jingxing hesitates for a moment, unable to bring himself to say anything that might reject him.
Qi Jingxing sometimes thinks that he and Tan Jiashu don't actually have much in common. In their relationship, he even begins to understand some of Fu Shuwen's state of mind, and at times feels that in some ways he isn't so different from Fu Shuwen. But Tan Jiashu always finds a way to show him how utterly different the two of them are, and the regrets Qi Jingxing has carried through life are gradually made whole by this relationship that went beyond anything he expected.
"I can't answer the question of what we are to each other, either... But maybe I shouldn't..."
"Didn't you say I was someone special? It's the same for me, ge. You can't push me away."
Content warning: The pursuer was once the lover of the beloved's friend from his youth, but the two never had any intimate contact.
Theme: Life does not let down those who work hard
