Summer, Revisited

Chi Fan had always been driven, but there was one setback she could never bring herself to talk about:

She fell in love with Zhou Xi'ai, her older brother's best friend.

The Chi and Zhou families had been family friends for generations. Zhou Xi'ai was nine years older than Chi Fan. He taught her to paint, and she called him her teacher.

Nine years is a little less than ten, but it was enough to keep her a whole stage of life behind him. When she was just starting to learn to paint, he was already holding his own solo exhibition. When she applied to art school, he had already changed careers and gone into art investment.

She chased after Zhou Xi'ai, but it always seemed she could never catch up.

Then, the summer she turned twenty, Chi Fan accomplished two major things:

First, she finally made a passionate move on Zhou Xi'ai and turned her longtime childhood crush into her older boyfriend.

Second, before summer was over, she dumped Zhou Xi'ai and disappeared without a word, leaving the country.

Chi Fan thought that was the end of her first love story. Zhou Xi'ai was a reliable adult. No matter how messy the breakup, he would handle it with grace.

But she was wrong.

On the other side of the world, summer stretched on, long and golden. Chi Fan was about to share an ice cream cone with her date when she suddenly looked up.

Across the street, beneath a sky so blue it made her heart ache, stood Zhou Xi'ai.

The sunshine was dazzling, but the look in his eyes as he stared at her was the deepest black.

Keywords to stack for extra effect: age gap, old flames rekindled, unrequited love becomes mutual, second chance romance, fake wealthy-family drama

Theme: The beauty of life is right by your side