Small-Town Girl x Bookshop Owner | Mutual Healing | Age Gap
The wooden stick plunged hard into the cup, sending juice splashing everywhere.
Xie Juan was making muddled orange juice, growing bored and irritated with the task. Feng Cen ordered it every time she came in. Couldn’t she try something else for once?
Feng Cen picked up on his temper and smiled. “I’m Feng Cen. You can call me Orange.”
“What about you? What’s your name?”
The young man pretended not to hear.
Feng Cen raised her voice and asked again. Even a deaf person would have heard her this time, and a customer nearby glanced over at them.
“Xie Juan.”
“Which ‘juan’?”
Xie Juan pointed at his own face, yellow juice still on his fingertip. “Do you see my face?”
“Huh?” She knew he was handsome, but why was he going out of his way to point it out?
“Juan as in looking worn out, exhausted.”
Feng Cen would later learn that Xie Juan seemed like a carefree little shop owner, but in truth he was just like her:
A stray dog with nowhere to go.
-
Late one night, Xie Juan was once again mashing oranges until juice ran everywhere.
With her ears burning red, Feng Cen pleaded softly, “Boss Xie, you’re being unreasonable. I said I’d come back to see you, and I kept my word. So why are you getting mad at me now?”
Xie Juan said nothing. He just kept squeezing the juice.
The next morning, Feng Cen woke with an aching back and sore legs, but her indefatigable appetite for learning remained. “You have to give me a reason for being mad.”
“Call me big brother.” Xie Juan beckoned her with a finger.
Feng Cen was good-natured about it. “Big Brother Xie.”
“Yesterday, when you got off work, that male coworker walked along chatting and laughing with you the whole way. Even after you left, he kept watching you, looking terribly reluctant to let you go.”
“I don’t have feelings for him. Besides, everyone knows I have a boyfriend.”
Xie Juan circled his arms around Feng Cen from behind, settling her in his lap like a little cat.
“Marry me, Orange.”
“Although marriage has virtually no binding force morally, I still want you to give me the one and only legally recognized status available to me within the People’s Republic of China.”
*
Feng Cen’s mother was a teacher.
One ordinary night, her life came to an abrupt, unexpected end.
People said she had died by suicide.
Then one day, Feng Cen found a diary, a diary that had been hidden away.
A famous and powerful figure appeared in its pages.
Theme: Love, create, and ultimately burn together
