Hey! Little Bear

Campus romance / mutual pining comes true / both pursue each other / heroine born to shine

A lighthearted, funny slice-of-life story, also known as "The Story of Mary and Su"

The lively, outgoing heroine, a loud, larger-than-life social butterfly

VS

The naturally absent-minded hero, who says little and has an unusual way of thinking

[Blurb]

By their second year of high school, the whole class knew Chen Mary was a crazy girl who refused to lose.

Debate competition? She had to be MVP.

Speech contest? She had to take first place.

Interdisciplinary quiz? The championship was a given.

No matter how many firsts Chen Mary won, that unflappable boy would always give her a leisurely glance and offer his calm assessment:

"Not bad."

"Pretty good."

"A little better than the little bear."

The whole school knew they were evenly matched.

She shone brightly on the field of competition, while he was as steady as a mountain when it came to exams.

They were desk mates, rivals, and each other's one and only variable.

After the college entrance exams, they enrolled at top universities.

The whole school was shocked: "Those two are actually a couple?"

One of them was just as surprised: "My desk mate had a whole plan. By the time I realized what was happening, she'd already made herself a part of my life forever."

Someone asked, "How did you manage to keep moving forward side by side all the way?"

He said, "Because she's so strong. I didn't want to fall behind."

She said, "He was chasing me, so I couldn't stop."

Staying by your side from school uniforms to the heights of academia

is never a battle fought alone.

The story is set on January 21, 2016. The date is recorded in Pages.

[Very Long Disclaimer Ahead]

At the author's high school, classes started at eight in the morning and ended at five in the afternoon. Students had weekends off, even in their final year. Evening study sessions only started in the final year and ended at seven. Students could bring their phones and wouldn't have them confiscated unless they got caught using them in class.

Most students lived at home. At lunchtime, they could eat in the cafeteria or head out to find something to eat. There was a 7-Eleven open 24 hours a day right next to the school, and within one or two kilometers there were McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, Haidilao, all kinds of cultural centers, cinemas, libraries, science museums, aquariums, shopping malls, and a whole street of food stalls.

That's the kind of school I used as the backdrop for this campus romance. The characters aren't based on real people. I could never write that intensely competitive, suffocating atmosphere. This story is just about a beautiful youth.

I also went through a time when I was diagnosed at the hospital with severe depression and bipolar disorder. Looking back on the journey, I'm grateful I never gave up on life.

If you've stopped by hoping to read about grueling studies, exhausting lives, and complicated relationships, this cozy, sugary-sweet story probably isn't to your taste~

I just want to write about a high school girl with a happy family, free to grow as she pleases, but with a few little teenage worries.

She's not a genius who's effortlessly topped her year since childhood, but she's no slouch either. As her mother says, "Girls just take a little longer to come into their own." Of course she can work hard and go from the bottom of the top exam group to one of the highest-ranked students.

She likes a boy, and that feeling grows into a fairy tale like this one. She gets caught up in knots over even the offhand things he says because she has a crush on him. But she's even more competitive than he is, and wants to shine at school. Little by little, she grows into an all-around MVP.

The heroine is the reason this hero exists. He doesn't curse or fight, and he isn't very good at saying cheesy, flirtatious things. Even when he's trying to charm someone, he does it in a low-key way. He has to be a top student, or he wouldn't be worthy of the heroine's ambition. All things considered, his flaws are that he's a little bit chuunibyou, not very attractive to women, and low on emotional intelligence (?). I personally think these are endearing traits. After all, the heroine is outgoing and sociable, so the hero doesn't need to be more lively or draw more attention.

All right, if you've read this whole wall of text, you must be incredibly patient. I'm sure you can succeed at anything you set your mind to!

So welcome!

Click through to the story and join Mary and Su on their adventure~

Mwah~

Theme: Study hard and challenge yourself.