This story is free in its entirety. Pei Mo x Bingbing from When the Moon Shines. You can read it even if you haven't played the game. The blurb introduces the characters and gives a summary of the events leading up to the story. Second-person POV.
Tangled up and unbelievably strong Mo x sensitive, people-pleasing Bing.
Background: The game is roughly about the protagonist, a tavern owner, who is forced to marry into the Helian family to save her struggling business. The brothers are romanceable characters (the younger brother wears red, and only gets a brief mention in the story). There's also a food inspector who is a romanceable character and the third-in-command of the underground ghost city (also only briefly mentioned). Pei Mo joined the underground ghost city of her own free will, faking her death to leave. She's incredibly strong and has the bloodline of a family high priest who raises poisonous moths, earning her the title of Second-in-Command. She competes with the Third-in-Command to become the heir. Pei Mo and Bingbing grew up together. In Pei Mo's route, Bingbing follows the fluorescent moths to the underground ghost city and moves in with Pei Mo. That's where this story begins, as their wonderful and complicated life together officially gets underway~
Some additional official character details:
Pei Mo is an excellent cook, a fast learner, not very good at expressing herself, and hot-tempered.
Tianshi Chai: The villain who researches poisonous moths. He's deranged in everything he does (only briefly mentioned).
Father: The First-in-Command, ruler of the ghost city, and also the owner of a thriving tavern aboveground (only briefly mentioned).
All other characters are fictional.
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Your feelings for her are so hard to speak of. You don't know if they're envy of her talent, resentment over her sudden death, a plea to an unknown god, or a form of self-redemption born of despair. That feeling you can't let go of is like a stick of incense burning away in an instant at Daxiangguo Temple. When the ashes fall, they mark the final breaths of the incense stick's life.
You don't know what those feelings are. You imagine they're your final breaths, and that thought becomes Pei Yunlou's relentless struggle. Pei Mo rushed along her own path. You followed in her footsteps, searching by the map she left behind, chasing moths to find her, and somehow, you found her. Love can't be nothing but following and imitating. In those popular stories, love is the late-night conversation between a eunuch and a consort, or the forbidden thrill of an adopted son living alongside a biological daughter. No one writes about boring love. So love can't be endless waiting, or ten years of wasted time and entanglements that have run their course.
So all you can be is friends.
The love between friends does exist, but it's not the same kind of love. That's what you believed until she kissed you.
It's not the same kind of love.
Theme: Communicate well with your lover
