Chasing the Frost

[Reader's note: Multiple perspectives and plotlines, an ensemble cast, and a slow build. The story takes off in a big way from Volume Two. Updated daily.]

[Intuitive, mild-mannered, emotionally hollow seme x falsely cheerful, obsessive, straightforward uke. They grow together as they pursue each other.]

Whether it was Mu Jiqing's fault or Long Yi's, one thing was certain: ever since the two of them met, they'd been nothing but unlucky.

Like when they both transformed during the entrance exam and ended up in the hospital holding hands. Or when a supposedly foolproof exploration mission went wrong and a monster suddenly came at them, trying to kill them. Or when they were walking through another world and Long Yi suddenly realized that his best buddy had turned into the demon he hated most!

Long Yi was aghast. "You never said you could transform!"

Mu Jiqing was dumbfounded. "I didn't know either!"

Long Yi was furious. "Enough! Die, monster!"

Mu Jiqing: "!!!"

After failing to kill him twice, Long Yi thought it over and decided to give his buddy a hand. They'd been through life and death together, after all. How could he just give up on him?

So he threw himself into a massive rescue effort, running all over the place and searching every corner of the world for a way to save him.

The process was arduous, but the results were plain to see. For example, he finally got the battered Mu Jiqing looking human again. Then, during one prison visit, Long Yi overheard the guy gossiping about his embarrassing past.

Long Yi: "...Fine. I'll beat you to death when you get out. :)"

After finally rescuing this wreck of a man, body and spirit both broken, Long Yi suddenly grew wary. "Don't tell me you still haven't been cured and can still transform?"

Mu Jiqing earnestly shook his head and pointed to the sky. "I won't transform anymore, but you seem to have forgotten something, like how we always get unlucky when we're together. Look, the real boss is here."

Blurb Two:

After the first summer of high school entrance exams, Mu Jiqing secretly leaves his guardian behind and comes alone to the city he's been looking forward to visiting for so long.

Jicheng.

As if guided by fate, he collides in a pitch-black, lightless alley with something he should never have encountered, and his ill-fated bond with it begins in earnest.

Then the curtain rises on another world.

A planned beginning, a garden of white fog, a foreign land of deep gray, a chaotic dream...

Illusions multiply. One bizarre event after another, things he'd never experienced in his first eighteen years, unfold in his life. The incidents pile up, conspiracies weave into threads and nets, pushing him from an ignorant outsider step by step toward the heart of the city.

Everything false, hidden, and deliberately mystifying is gradually exposed. Here, he finds the truth he first set out to seek, but everything he wanted has become unrecognizable.

By laying himself bare and meeting his fate, he takes deception as his path. He will stand here and witness the final destination.

Perhaps he belonged here all along.

The curtain is only a gauzy facade. Even if no one pulls it aside, surely one day he would have broken in and leapt into this abyss of his own accord.

After all, every pursuit is only a return long delayed.

Back to the starting point. Back to the end.

Destroying everything that was once beautiful and everything left full of regret.

Reading guide:

1. Ensemble cast, ensemble cast, ensemble cast. My take on a world, serious tone, slow build, many twisted relationships between characters. Everything serves the plot.

2. The point of view shifts. Extras often interrupt the story. Includes melodramatic, tangled family drama and a huge number of flashbacks.

3. Updated daily.

Theme: Finding genuine affection as you grow