Connecting the Threads

This is a workplace story about a ready-to-wear designer. Ready-to-wear design is different from haute couture; it's aimed at the mass market. Xiao Lin comes from a small city in the southwest. Her family is full of science and engineering types, and she's the only one with an artistic streak. After graduating from an art academy with a degree in fashion design, she heads to Shenzhen alone to look for work. She wants to become a fashion designer, but can't get her ambitions off the ground. In the year after graduation, she changes jobs again and again, working at various small companies in positions called "fashion designer" that are really just about copying and reproducing other people's designs. As she watches her dream slip further away, she finally can't take it anymore and quits on the spot. Her rent is overdue, her phone bill is unpaid, and she finds herself stranded on the streets of a strange city with her luggage in hand. Should she call her family? Should she keep pursuing her dream and striking out on her own, or go back home and take the nine-to-five administrative job her parents have arranged for her? At a turning point in her life, she meets Zhao Yuan. They are alumni. He graduated eight years before her. In the eyes of his university mentor, he is an ordinary man with "no creative spark." Through hard work, he climbed the ranks step by step to become a design director at a well-known domestic fashion company. He has clearly succeeded, yet there's not the slightest aura of success about him. He wears a black baseball cap every day and shabby gray clothes, and walks with heavy steps. He is always in the sample room, checking garments. His eyes and face are hidden beneath the shadow of his cap. Silently, he weaves his life together with the threads in his hands. [Ready-to-wear design + workplace + personal growth + romance?] In the first half of the story, the male lead is the female lead's lighthouse. He illuminates her career dreams and guides her along her professional path. In the second half, once the female lead has grown, she lights up the male lead's life. Apart from work, he's basically helpless at everyday life and clueless about love. When it comes to romance, the male lead is like an elementary school student: green, naive, and innocent. Readers in the comments have been asking when the leads will start dating. The male lead always wears a cap that keeps people from seeing his face, right? When he takes off his cap and shows his face, that's when they'll start dating. I think that if you set aside his passion and dedication to his career, he's far too immature to be the hero of a romance novel. He's an old piece of cured meat on the outside, with the heart of a little puppy. He's really not much of a threat. Only a newly graduated Xiao Lin would see him as an unattainable dream guy. Starting from Chapter 9, some earlier and later events don't quite line up, because I've revised the earlier chapters but haven't had time to finish revising the later ones. I really like this story. I adore the male lead, and I also like the female lead's clear-eyed, silly, polite yet stubborn personality. This is one of those stories I'll finish someday, but I don't want to abandon it. I just don't have time to update it for now. Theme: Chasing dreams in the city