[Small-Town Fiction] [Bittersweet Slow Burn] [1v1] [HE]
[World-Weary and Cynical x Sunny and Bright]
That year, Yuan Bei was seventeen when he transferred to a small town in the far north.
It was a refuge his mother had left behind.
There, he met Ting Nan.
A girl with two very different sides.
In the backward little town, rumors were everywhere.
The pride of the heavens had fallen into the mud.
Everyone avoided her.
Everyone except Yuan Bei.
Because he sensed someone like himself in her.
He understood how she felt.
In Nan'an Town, beneath the wildly growing locust tree on Qinghuai Alley,
Yuan Bei held out his hand and hooked his pinky around hers. "Then it's a promise. We'll get out of here together and go to college."
Ting Nan said nothing, only curling her little finger around his.
The girl had met a god with a tender heart.
Later
The locust tree withered, and the cicadas fell silent.
The boy disappeared along with that summer.
When Ting Nan was in college, she received envelopes every month.
Sometimes they contained clumsily written letters.
Sometimes, financial support.
She thought they were gifts from a kind stranger.
But little by little, she realized
Someone had been leaving footprints for her at every step of her journey out of that small town.
Yuan Bei was doing everything he could to lift her up.
The envelopes all came from different addresses, leaving Ting Nan with no way to track them down.
She mustered almost all the courage she had and risked everything.
She didn't find the kite. It was still flying in the sky.
One day, on a giant screen in a shopping mall, she saw the Yuan Bei she'd searched for day and night.
The boy had won the hearts of countless girls.
But what about her heart?
The kite had flown so far. Could she offer him her heart?
From the south of the mountains to the north of the rivers, could they meet again?
Theme: Hold your head high and stride forward, no matter what lies ahead
