Dr. Cheng's First Love Lasted Only 29 Days

Cheng Shubai grew up in a family of intellectuals. His parents were accomplished scholars, but they did not know how to express love. So it was only natural that he grew up to be an instrument with impeccable logic and a wall around his emotions. He chose psychiatry at university, at first hoping to dissect his own limited emotional range. He wanted to know why love, which surged like a flood for other people, left only a dry riverbed in him.

He thought his dry, tasteless life would go on until the day he closed his eyes for good. Then, at thirty, he met Wen Jingming.

The case file read: Severe bipolar disorder, mixed episode, high risk of suicide.

Wen Jingming was tall but thin, with large eyes beneath monolids and rimless glasses. His manner held the restraint of someone on the verge of breaking. At their first appointment, Cheng Shubai understood that this man's inner world had already collapsed. Medication alone was keeping him upright, preserving his last shred of dignity.

And yet... Cheng Shubai fell for him.

He secretly looked forward to their subsequent scheduled therapy sessions. Whenever the name "Wen Jingming" appeared on his calendar, the instrument called his heart would start registering abnormal readings. He never said anything, always maintaining a professional distance, as though those stirrings were merely background noise in the consulting room.

Until their fourth session, when Wen Jingming leaned back in his chair. A faint smile appeared in his eyes behind the lenses.

"Dr. Cheng, would you like to fall in love with me?"

The consulting room was silent. Cheng Shubai heard himself answer in a voice so calm it didn't sound like his own: "Yes!"

They got together. For twenty-nine days, every day felt like stolen sweetness. For the first time, Cheng Shubai understood his patients whose lives were consumed by love. Love was not an abstract clinical concept. It was Wen Jingming burning breakfast in the kitchen, their steady breathing as they held each other late at night, and the smile he gave Cheng Shubai when he suddenly turned around on a hike.

Bathed in love, Cheng Shubai almost forgot the cold diagnostic terms in Wen Jingming's medical file. He was so certain that this love was the best medicine to heal Wen Jingming.

On the twenty-ninth day, under a full moon, Cheng Shubai followed a flower shop clerk's recommendation and bought a bouquet of pale blue hydrangeas. Wen Jingming had once said that shade of blue was like the sky after rain.

He was holding the flowers outside the apartment building when his phone rang.

It wasn't Wen Jingming.

"Are you Cheng Shubai? We're with the Public Security Bureau. Wen Jingming has attempted suicide, and you're listed as his emergency contact. Please come to Anhe Hospital."

The call ended. The hydrangeas bloomed beautifully in his arms, blue as a sky that had never been overcast.

And the love of those twenty-nine days suddenly seemed like a long, tender suicide note.

An emotionally detached bottom who works hard to become warm and proactive for his lover x a top whose inner world is on the verge of collapse but who strives to seek treatment for his boyfriend

Told from both perspectives~ Chapters starting with C are from Cheng Shubai's point of view and follow the main timeline. Chapters starting with W are from Wen Jingming's point of view and follow the secondary timeline~

Updated daily

Enjoy reading~

Theme: Not sweetness without shadows, but sweetness that chooses to face the sun even while knowing the shadows are there.