Six Characters Apart

Wen Shiyue never expected to see Li Qie again during this midsummer, so many years later. He was the boy who had once caught her eye and quietly taken over her entire youth, the adored golden boy everyone had envied. But now, he wasn't really him. Apart from having almost exactly the same face, he was nothing like him. His name was Lin Xu. He was a streetwise guy who always had a cigarette in his mouth and a roguish air about him. The way he looked at her was both unfamiliar and flirtatious. She was disappointed that he wasn't him, yet relieved that he wasn't him. One night, the water stopped working in Wen Shiyue's apartment. She went to use the communal bathroom, but when she came out, she ran into Lin Xu, leaning against the entrance and smoking. The man's brazen gaze traveled up from her bare calves, exposed to the air, until it came to rest on her face. With a cigarette between his teeth, he flashed a roguish smile. “You're pretty tempting like this.” Wen Shiyue instinctively crossed her arms over her chest. She never used the communal bathroom again. Not long after, a major case was cracked here. Wen Shiyue saw Lin Xu's police ID. The real name on it was Li Qie. He opened the ID and held it out to her. “Long time no see, Wen Shiyue.” Later, the team members noticed that their stern Captain Li, who was always devoted to his work and treated the base as home, was quicker than anyone else to leave whenever he had a day off. The team members were baffled. “There's something very off about the captain!” Later still, they saw Captain Li smiling like a sunflower at a young woman, and all their questions seemed to answer themselves. Li Qie tried to bargain. “My subordinates all saw it, so give me a little face.” Wen Shiyue couldn't help asking, “What?” Li Qie leaned close to her ear. “Give me a little face and be my girlfriend.” At first, Wen Shiyue thought the closest she and Li Qie could get was the six characters in the line, “Brew new tea with fresh fire, and enjoy poetry and wine while we're young.” Years later, Li Qie told Wen Shiyue that if they had to be six characters apart, those words would be: “Li Qie loves Wen Shiyue.” *Reunited after years apart, mutual secret crushes, one-on-one romance, both virgins *The author's blurb-writing skills are terrible. Please bear with me. Theme: Live toward the sun and love with all your heart