The Mad Dog Kissed Summer

The main story is complete. Thank you to all the lovely readers who kept following along! [A genius girl with social difficulties x an aloof top student who is actually a mad dog] | Ten years of waiting | Sweet and bittersweet healing | Two strong leads in love

(My next book is a sweet romance with plenty of angst, a marriage first and love later: "She Is Out of Reach: After Netizens and a Powerful Tycoon Arrange Her Marriage, It Comes True". Please add it to your lists! A grateful bow!)

The day Ku Xia returned to her old school to repeat her senior year after withdrawing from a prestigious school amid rumors of “deliberately injuring someone and falsifying her grades,” Pei Qiye was on the stage accepting an award for placing first in the citywide exams.

The young man stood in the silent shadows, his icy presence at odds with the clamor of the crowd gazing up at him.

Asked to share his study tips with students from a rival school visiting for the day, he said only, coldly, “The competition was too weak.”

“Damn, what an arrogant jerk! Who knows if his grades are even real? Their school has been caught faking results before. That genius girl who just got exposed online graduated from their school, didn't she? Genius, my foot. She's probably just a cheating hack.”

The boy had never cared about his reputation.

He picked up the trophy he had been about to throw away and hurled it at the people pointing at Ku Xia and cruelly mocking her.

With blood still smeared across his lips, he paid no mind to the dean's anguished reprimand and disciplinary notice for “getting into a fight in public despite being an award-winning student.” He simply raised his clear, untamed eyes and smiled softly at her. “Sis, now we're the same.”

That was the second time Ku Xia had seen him.

But the way the boy looked at her made it seem as though he had known her for years.

No one knew that her past was hidden in the bleak summer of ten years ago, in a psychiatric hospital, a past only Pei Qiye knew.

She was the bright moon fallen into the mire, and he was the mad dog who had always been sinking into the abyss.

Later, in the small town where they had parted and could not meet again despite the thousands of miles between them, a typhoon raged. The young man stood drenched in the dark, his silhouette as earnest as it had been in his youth. His proud, wild spirit, never once tamed, was willingly crushed. He lowered his eyes, his restrained voice hoarse with longing. “Sis, could you let me in?”

“I'll even be your dog. I'll do anything, as long as I can stay by your side.”

Ku Xia once thought that, because of the flaw she had been born with, she would never be able to approach this noisy, chaotic world.

Until the young man stood on a dazzling stage, his gaze cutting through the countless screams and settling on the raised platform in the corner where she alone sat. It was ardent and unwavering. “Sis, I see you.”

Pei Qiye, I see you too.

You're the only one I can see.

The world was noisy and colorless to her, and he was the only vivid color in her eyes.

[Disgraced genius girl with social difficulties and Asperger's] Ku Xia x [Fake ice prince with a hidden, unrepentant mad streak] Pei Qiye. Each other's first love. No love triangles or contrived misunderstandings. Sweet, an unconventional older-girl-younger-boy romance, with only a small age gap.

Asperger's isn't an illness. It's just a one-of-a-kind star. I hope this summer leaves all you sweethearts with the feeling of a starry summer night. Pudding is here, being cute and begging you to add the book to your lists! A grateful bow!

Note: There will be a third kind of affection beyond the usual male-female romance, but it will be very minor and will be marked in the chapter titles. If any of you sweethearts don't like that, or if it affects your enjoyment of the story, Pudding would like to offer a sincere apology in advance. I'm sorry, and thank you! A grateful bow!

P.S. Thanks to the lovely Tao Zhi for commissioning the cover! It suits Pei, the mad dog, and Ku Xia so well!

--- This is the blurb for my next sweet romance, "She Is Out of Reach: After Netizens and a Powerful Tycoon Arrange Her Marriage, It Comes True". Please add it to your lists! ---

Stubborn idealist beauty of a director x heir to a top-tier wealthy family who slowly woos her. A sweet, soft girl with a strong will to leave and divorce at any moment x a cold, scheming, guiding lover who acts aloof but is madly in love with her.

Marriage first, love later | Contract couple livestream | Older man, 22 and 28 | One-on-one, each other's first love | A sweet romance with plenty of angst.

The first time Fu Ning met Jiang Siyu, he was rescuing a pervert whose head she had cracked open in the wilderness.

A stuffy doctor with an overdeveloped sense of professional duty and a handsome face was Fu Ning's only impression of him.

The second time was after nightfall, when the temperature in the Alps plunged. She woke up freezing in the middle of the night and knocked on the only tent nearby with a light on.

“Could I borrow some hot water...” The words died on her lips when she saw the sight beneath the man's shirt. Fu Ning, who had mild face blindness, blinked. “It's pretty cold. Want to sleep together?”

The third time was after she returned to China.

Fu Ning's indie film had earned critical acclaim but flopped at the box office. She was reduced to selling her house to pay her staff when a clip of a promotional event, secretly filmed by a gossip account, suddenly went viral online.

[The leads' sweet moments leave me totally unmoved, but those three seconds of sparks between two gorgeous strangers who don't even know each other? I've watched them so many times I'm practically making cheese.]

[The sweetest fruit is the one you force. Sweetie, if you livestream as a contract couple with this random handsome guy for a day, I'll buy a whole day's worth of tickets!]

Fu Ning would sooner lose her head than sell herself out for art. But after looking at the huge debt her studio owed, she finally bowed to money.

After a great deal of effort, she tracked down the man in the video.

He had just come out of surgery, his operating gown spattered with blood. Hidden beneath it was the man who would later take off his ring, give up on being single, and tease her in bed every which way until she agreed to make their relationship official. The warm brown eyes above his mask, the ones he showed patients' families, held a serenity that seemed to transcend life and death.

But when he stood alone in a shadowy corridor and saw her, he coolly stubbed out the cigarette in his long fingers.

“Miss Fu, what gave you the impression I was a good person?” He tilted his head slightly and stepped closer. Only then did she realize the elegant, handsome exterior concealed the dangerous undercurrents of a depraved man of the wilds. “You want to work with me? Pretend to be a couple on a livestream?”

He looked at her, a fleeting ripple in his dark eyes betraying the emotions she stirred in him, though his expression remained unchanged.

“Sorry, I don't pretend. I only do the real thing.”

“Marry me. Don't regret it, and don't beg me to stop.”

Later, after impulsively getting married, Fu Ning regretted it countless times.

Was working behind the scenes really not hard enough? Why did she have to suffer the pains of love on camera too? This man had no heart.

Until their final livestream, with their contract about to end.

They played a game: the loser had to choose truth or dare. Having already decided to divorce, Fu Ning chose dare, and the comments challenged her to feed him a strawberry using anything but her hands.

Fu Ning's porcelain-white skin flushed at once. Her lips nearly glistened as she bit them, and she steeled herself.

She picked up a piece of strawberry, held it in her mouth, and approached the man who seemed so cold and abstinent that he had never had a worldly desire in his life.

He watched her at his leisure, his entire demeanor radiating restrained indifference.

Even his Adam's apple did not move. It was as if she were no different from a stray cat or dog by the roadside.

They were about to touch.

His handsome, detached eyes shifted lazily. He turned his head, and his soft lips brushed past hers, carrying the moist sweetness of strawberries.

Fu Ning's anger and hurt reached their peak at once.

I'm done with this!

At the same time, the livestream screen suddenly went dark, the camera turned face down.

In the dim corner hidden from everyone's view, for the first time, the man's ever-cool, indifferent voice came through the screen, husky and tinged with a possessiveness he hadn't even realized he felt.

“Want to kiss me? You don't have to go to all that trouble.”

“No, you're the one who wants to kiss me! Mm... Mmph...”

“Yeah, I want to kiss you.”

“I was actually the one who lost the game. I choose truth.”

“Don't divorce me, okay?”

Holy crap!!! The online crowd, desperate to jump into their phones but unable to see a thing, went wild.

[A marriage arranged by fans who know what they're doing is the best! Who'd have thought we'd start out wanting to watch two people who barely know each other pretend to be in love for us, only for it to become real!]

Blurb Two (I Heard My Wife Was Someone Else's Girlfriend):

After her debut film won numerous awards, rising director Fu Ning became a controversial figure. Some loved the spirited quality of her work and thought she was gorgeous. Others accused her of making a name for herself by pairing up with stars, then acting high and mighty and looking down on everyone.

It got worse when a series of animated images of a popular top-tier star lifting the hem of Fu Ning's dress at an awards ceremony hit the internet. A gossip account claimed they had been together for a long time, and that Fu Ning had been throwing herself at him.

Another scandal was added to the pile: Fu Ning was a scheming woman who had used the rumors to pressure him into making her his official girlfriend.

At the banquet after the ceremony, the neglected young woman was perfectly content in a corner. She didn't notice the entertainment industry's usually arrogant bigwigs rushing toward an outstanding figure.

The man had an exceptionally handsome face.

Even more fearsome than his top-tier looks was the mysterious background no one dared discuss in public.

Someone saw Fu Ning get up and sneered, “Don't dream. Dating a top-tier star is the most you'll ever achieve in love. Someone with his status is way out of your league.”

Fu Ning looked up. The moment she recognized the person she supposedly couldn't reach, her adorable, soft face changed. She grabbed her clutch and left.

The next second, just as she was about to make her escape, a long leg was casually drawn into his embrace.

The man, who had reportedly rejected countless actresses, looked at her and glanced coolly at the empty ring finger on her hand.

Then he removed his own ring and quietly slipped it onto her finger.

“Be good. They say I'm out of your league.”

“Tell me, is there any part of me you haven't already explored?”

The next day, news broke that a second-generation tycoon, so low-profile the entire internet couldn't find a clear photo of his face, had married young before turning thirty. The announcement was made by the man himself on a newly registered account.

@JiangSiyuFJ: Wife, someone says you're another man's girlfriend. Can I shamelessly steal you away? @FuNinglemon

Theme: She is the moon he loves with an undying soul and unshakable faith