A Bite of Starlight

Notice: The main story is complete. The extras will be updated later. Thank you all for your support and love!

Next story/preorder: "Sleep Together" / "Words of Indignation". Blurbs below.

Sweet, gentle, adorable girl x cocky, spoiled, devastatingly handsome boy

1.

Just after Chuxing arrives at No. 4 High School with first place in the essay contest under her belt, students line up from the classroom all the way into the hallway to ask her to write love letters for them.

One day after school, someone leads Chuxing to a small grove outside the school.

The boy before her is so good-looking it's almost ostentatious. He holds a pink love letter between his fingers and asks nonchalantly, "Trying to chase me?"

Chuxing recognizes him: Yan Ren from Class 9, Senior Year.

He's a delinquent and a troublemaker, but he comes from a good family and is handsome. Even the principal can't do anything about him, and he's always followed by a whole fan club.

She trembles as she tries to explain that she wrote the letter for someone else, when Yan Ren suddenly chuckles.

"Sure."

Chuxing: ???

2.

At the district-wide exam, Yan Ren happens to be assigned to Chuxing's classroom, happens to sit in her seat, and happens to... find a love letter.

After the exam, they each return to their own class.

Yan Ren grabs a megaphone, leans casually against the hallway outside the first-year classrooms, and lets his lazy, domineering voice ring through almost the entire school.

"Listen up, underclassmen who want to give Chuxing a love letter!"

Through the window, Chuxing suddenly meets a pair of sly, foxlike eyes.

Yan Ren gives her a teasing smile.

"Want to reach for the stars? Sorry, this star already has my name on it."

3.

Later, at a get-together, Yan Ren's rowdy friends crowd around him and try to get him drunk.

Yan Ren turns them all down.

"My wife keeps me on a tight leash. I've turned over a new leaf."

Everyone is amazed. How could someone so brazen about dating in school keep his marriage so quiet that nobody even knew he was married?

Yan Ren smiles faintly as he spins his wedding ring around his finger, his voice full of tender affection.

"I spoil her, that's why."

-Among three thousand stars, I'll reach for only one.

-You.

"Sleep Together": Blustering X gloomy and disillusioned

The first time Chi Rang sees Shi Xia, she's been robbed by her own brother and has fallen awkwardly into the filthy water in an alley.

Her pale skirt is stained, and just like her miserable face, which looks as if she's about to cry, it irritates him.

Chi Rang tosses away his cigarette and calls out to the man who's happily counting his money.

"You do this kind of thing on my turf without paying protection money?"

-

At school, Shi Xia is the clever, well-behaved darling of her teachers and the top student everyone admires.

Her skirts are always clean and flowing, and her smile always bright and sunny.

But just as she's working hard to play the part of someone whose life is perfectly peaceful, Chi Rang suddenly transfers into her class.

At the corner of the garbage dump, Shi Xia pins Chi Rang against the wall and threatens him in a low voice, her face dark. "Don't say you know me, or else..."

"Or else what?" Chi Rang casually lights a cigarette. "You won't come keep me company in bed anymore?"

He blows pale blue smoke into Shi Xia's face and smiles with narrowed eyes. "Have I ever told you how irresistible you look in your school uniform?"

-

Shi Xia was born in a chaotic mire. She desperately wants to climb out and leave all that ugliness behind, doing everything she can to make her life clean and bright.

But Chi Rang's appearance turns everything upside down.

He's arrogant, brazen, and utterly self-assured. He has the gloom and darkness Shi Xia most wants to escape, but also the warmth and love she longs for more than anything.

She wants to run from him, but she can't bear to lose him.

Plenty of people at school are drawn to his dangerously dissolute charm, but Chi Rang always looks only in her direction, smiling carelessly.

"I have a lover."

"We're made for each other."

*We belong to the darkness forever, not to the beautiful sunrise.

*Come sleep with me.

The male lead is a jerk, and the female lead is flawed.

They save each other.

"Words of Indignation": Refined and composed x ill-tempered and aloof

Before Yan Zhen's father died, he left her an inheritance that could only be claimed on a specified date, along with an adoption certificate.

When the lawyer brings Yan Zhen a deaf-mute boy named Yan Zhi, she studies him expressionlessly. He has no blood relation to her, and she can't understand why inheriting the money means she has to live with this stranger for five years.

But for the sake of the inheritance, Yan Zhen still gets up and says, "Come home with me."

At first, Yan Zhi is quiet, obedient, and so gentle that Yan Zhen feels guilty.

Later, Yan Zhi grows mysterious and cold, with such hostility radiating from him that Yan Zhen becomes afraid.

-

Yan Zhi is a trapped beast stuck in a mire. Once he gets hold of something that can keep him alive, he'll never let go, even if it kills him.

At first, he wants to drag Yan Zhen down into hell with him.

Later, he begins to find that he can't bear to.

He is immersed in a silent darkness, and Yan Zhen's smile is the first sound of heaven he has ever heard.

He never speaks, yet she seems to understand him, showing him great tenderness, mercy, and tolerance.

In the dark, he wants to stain Yan Zhen with twilight.

In the sunshine, he wants to return her to a state of pure white.

Yan Zhi wavers between light and shadow, until Yan Zhen helps him choose.

-

Five years pass in the blink of an eye.

Yan Zhen takes the inheritance and plans to leave for good, but Yan Zhi catches up with her at the airport.

He ties her hands in front of her chest with his tie and whispers tenderly in her ear, "Zhenzhen, come home with me."

*Obsession breeds indignation, indignation breeds resentment, resentment breeds hatred.

*Of all the false, angry words I've said in this life, there's only one: I love you.

The male lead has psychological issues. He's genuinely bad and genuinely awful. He's only pretending to be deaf and mute, so don't expect too much of him.

Theme: Protecting what is beautiful