By the Gardenia Tree

Zhou Linchuan was the top student in Sucheng year after year, a cool and self-possessed prodigy admired by everyone.

In the height of summer in ninth grade, the timid transfer student Wen Zhinning entered his world. He fell for her at first sight, and his secret love stretched on for years.

They sat together year after year, from ninth grade through their final year of high school.

Their desk compartment held a trove of hidden tenderness and special affection. While everyone else noisily pursued love, the two of them shared the everyday warmth of life, guarding a heart-fluttering secret no one else knew.

Gentle and naive, she followed her family's rule that she could not date before turning eighteen. She mistook Zhou Linchuan's one-of-a-kind devotion for the purest friendship between classmates.

Yin Yinian was Zhou Linchuan's sworn rival, bold and unruly, dazzling and carefree.

From the moment they met, he had his eye on the quiet, gentle Wen Zhinning, and secretly loved her for years.

He saw every hint of intimacy hidden beneath the desk, saw through Zhou Linchuan's restrained affection, and knew the heroine had never felt the same way.

He guarded his secret feelings, testing the waters again and again, then backing off each time. In the end, he loved her from beginning to end without hope of return, watching from the sidelines the whole time.

Their youthful years came to an end, and the final chapter of the college entrance exams arrived.

Zhou Linchuan broke through years of restraint and confessed boldly, but in the end, the gulf between their family backgrounds defeated him.

Not wanting to hold back his bright future at Tsinghua, Wen Zhinning pushed away her entire youth with her own hands.

For the next four years, mountains and seas lay between them.

Zhou Linchuan hid his longing, returning to his hometown year after year, daring only to gaze at her from afar;

Yin Yinian carried his long regret, watching her struggle through hardship. He could only stay by her side as a friend, never able to enter her story.

Then, after an appendectomy, a girl crouched miserably by the roadside, and Zhou Linchuan's love, restrained for years, finally broke loose beyond control.

Across ten thousand miles, Linchuan came only to meet Zhi.

The heartbeats they had kept silent in their youth overcame the passage of time, the gulf between their families, and the regret of a secret love that had never reached its ending.

Their youth had been left unfinished, but at last Linchuan met Zhi, and together they would share peaceful happiness year after year.

Theme: Sharing the everyday moments of a secret crush