Xie Jin and Cheng Li first met at the bubble tea shop where she worked part-time.
The girl had a slender figure. During her break, she memorized vocabulary with a serious expression.
The second time Xie Jin and Cheng Li met was at school, by the flagpole.
Cheng Li was working on a blackboard display.
With her classmates, she smiled often, though she was still as thin as a reed.
Cheng Li remembered the later encounter as her first meeting with Xie Jin.
The campus was quiet in the afternoon. Sunlight draped over the boy, his wolf-tail haircut bold and unruly as he stood with his hands in his pockets.
He suddenly offered to help her write out the blackboard display. His neat, regular script seemed completely at odds with his usual air.
His pale eyes met her dark ones, and she decided he looked like someone who would be easy to fool.
Still, Cheng Li hadn't set her sights on Xie Jin at first.
She had a dream, and chasing it would take a lot of money.
Her family couldn't afford to support her.
She tried her best, but kept hitting one wall after another.
At her most desperate, the Xie family handed her a bank card with five million yuan on it.
After graduating from high school, Cheng Li applied to a school in another city without a word, leaving without saying goodbye for three or four years.
*
Word was that after Xie Jin started university, he began dating a girl for longer than any of his previous girlfriends. He broke the curse of breaking up after graduation, and it seemed they were close to getting married.
Cheng Li's dream had taken her from a small studio to a major company. She met him again at a business dinner.
He wore a dark suit, his wolf-tail haircut unchanged, seated in the middle of the crowd and still the center of attention. His pale gaze was cool and indifferent, unlike anything she'd seen before.
The past was like the wind, passing in an instant.
Then, a few days later, Cheng Li got out of a male subordinate's car and found someone waiting outside her home.
The red around his eyes showed through the darkness. Big tears fell as he gritted his teeth and said, “I hate you so much.”
That calligraphy prodigy, famous in Xicheng and throughout the country, had only ever been in love once.
From first love to gray hair, from school uniforms to wedding gowns.
During the years they were apart, Xie Jin refused to admit he was single, because Cheng Li had never told him they were breaking up when she left.
Well-behaved girl VS rebellious rich boy on the surface
[2026.2.23]
P.S. 1. The setting is loosely inspired by the period around 2016, but the story is mostly fictional.
2. The leads are both adults when they become a couple.
Here's the blurb for my next book, Winter at Twenty-Nine. Interested readers can add it to their collections!
The Fu family built their fortune from nothing and aren't accepted by Shanghai's elite circles.
The Fu family's youngest daughter, Fu Xi, has been set up twice with Shen Zezhao of the wealthy Shen family, but both arrangements failed. She hasn't even met him.
At a wedding, Fu Xi sat among the guests, watching the groom she'd secretly loved for years up on the stage.
The gossip around her was grating. They said she was shamelessly throwing herself at him, and that the Shen family had shown her no respect.
Fu Xi was about to snap back when someone stepped up beside her.
The man in an immaculate suit and shirt was none other than Shen Zezhao.
Shen Zezhao publicly dispelled the rumors against her, then left with her.
Fu Xi's opinion of him improved a little.
A few days later, Fu Xi started thinking about using the start-up fund she'd get from marrying into a family to launch her own business.
She had to keep it secret from her family, and she'd grown distant from her social circle.
So she asked the only person she knew reasonably well, Shen Zezhao, if he could recommend anyone for her to marry.
Shen Zezhao compiled information on eligible bachelors in their social circle and sent Fu Xi a document tens of thousands of words long.
The document made Fu Xi's head spin, so she asked him to just give her a name.
Shen Zezhao replied: “I don't think any of these men are good enough to marry Miss Fu.”
“The person I'd recommend most is myself.”
Upright, proper older man VS flirtatious, straightforward heiress
Core message: Dreams are above all else
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