The Third Banana

When Ji Yuelong first heard the name Ling Shu from her boyfriend, she joked, "Isn't that the template for a teen drama heartthrob?"

Tall and handsome, 187 centimeters, captain of the hockey team, with his locker stuffed full of chocolates and love letters, and grades so terrible they couldn't even pass.

So even after she became Ling Shu's private tutor, saw the breathtaking scenery on Mount Robson with him, accompanied him to the hospital for a last-minute injection before a game, and let him witness the embarrassment of her boyfriend standing her up, she never imagined there could be anything more between her and Ling Shu.

They were like parallel lines in a two-dimensional world, with no chance of ever intersecting.

*

One corner of the table she'd bought long ago was unsteady. Ji Yuelong thought it was just a trivial problem, but Ling Shu wedged an anonymous watercolor painting beneath it to prop it up.

The painting showed a banana, brightly colored and beautiful, but impossible to eat.

As Ji Yuelong refreshed her messages on her phone, she suddenly heard him say lazily, "Stop paying attention to your boyfriend all the time. Look at this banana once in a while, too."

The boy's face was faintly flushed from the sake. For the first time, Ji Yuelong didn't listen to her tardy boyfriend's grandiloquent speech. Instead, she stared dazedly into Ling Shu's clear eyes.

"He has so many targets, but this one only cares about you."

I only care about you.

*

When Ji Yuelong broke up with her boyfriend, her social media feed exploded. Everyone urged the couple, who had been together for years, to get back together.

Her usually mature and rational boyfriend scowled, his knuckles turning white. "She's just a work contact. Can you stop making a scene?"

"You're a good person," Ji Yuelong replied calmly, looking him in the eye. "I've fallen for someone else."

Ji Yuelong's life had once been a dull fruit platter, with nothing left to the imagination.

But when she reached out her hand, a rotten piece of fruit rolled away, and she accidentally touched a third banana she'd never seen before.

1. The second male lead has other problems, but he doesn't cheat.

2. The female lead falls for someone else.

3. The female lead breaks up with the second male lead before beginning a romance with the male lead.

6/30/2023

(I've made a few small changes to the setup. Here's the original blurb:)

At a class reunion many years later, the guys drunkenly grabbed Ling Jia by the collar and asked resentfully, "How did you manage to hold on to our goddess Ji's heart all the way over in Canada?"

Ling Jia smoothed his wrinkled collar, his light tea-colored eyes utterly calm. "I guess I just kept at it."

------ Kept at it by putting the moves on her dirtbag boyfriend:)

They first met at a hometown association event in Canada. Ling Jia walked in with a skateboard under his arm, bringing the crisp scent of rime frost with him. Ji Yuelong was being pressured by a group of malicious people to reveal her secrets, while her boyfriend, the subject of their conversation, watched with folded arms and an amused expression.

Ling Jia's icy presence silenced the whole room.

At the time, Ji Yuelong thought it was just a chance encounter with a cool, handsome guy.

Even later, when she happened to run into this skateboarding heartthrob in her advisor's office, at Sunday church services, while working on a group project at the library, and even at a hotel where she caught her trashy boyfriend getting intimate with a blonde, she assumed it was all coincidence.

Until the night before Ji Yuelong returned to China.

Drunk, Ling Jia rested his head heavily on Ji Yuelong's shoulder. His moist, alcohol-scented breath brushed the beauty mark at the corner of her lips. "Stop looking only at your boyfriend. Pay a little attention to me, too."

The fair skin of Ling Jia's face was flushed from the sake, but his eyes were clear. "He has so many targets to chase, but I only like you."

Cheated-on girl X homewrecker guy

A cheesy story set abroad about "We were never meant to meet, so I had to steal you away." If you're wondering about morals, the dirtbag boyfriend ate them all.

2020/02/29

Theme: Parallel lines on a two-dimensional plane can intersect in a third world