[She wants an orange that will never go bad]
[Yu Jiarui x Xia Cheng]
Yu Jiarui had a secret she kept from the whole world, though perhaps the world already knew it.
As a child, she didn't like oranges. After she turned fourteen, they became her favorite fruit.
Oranges were a winter fruit, but Yu Jiarui loved summer oranges best.
An entire spring stood between winter and summer.
Yu Jiarui couldn't openly love Xia Cheng in spring.
In fact, she couldn't openly love Xia Cheng in daylight at all.
A secret hidden in the night was destined to be held close, carefully, by its keeper alone.
"Yu Jiarui! Hey, this is my boyfriend."
The radiant beauty standing before her was the great dream Yu Jiarui had dreamed from the age of fourteen to nineteen. When Xia Cheng approached her of her own accord, when she lay beside her, Yu Jiarui couldn't help dreaming of something more, something greedier.
At nineteen, she thought she'd found an orange that would stay safe and juicy, sweet, and fresh from winter all the way through summer, an orange that would never go bad.
At twenty, she woke from the dream. The orange had never been hers.
The sun always has to rise.
And Yu Jiarui's secret could only die in the night.
Content warning: The viewpoint shifts. Yu Jiarui is not a wholly good person, and her values are questionable. This is a very low-key story, with no dramatic push and pull, just a small, private feeling.
Theme: In real life, a secret crush is often something people in sexual minorities have to keep hidden from the light. A secret crush is a love that never sees the light of day, only watching from afar in silence. The quiet love a lesbian feels for a straight girl is a darkness that cannot be brought into the light.
