An Unspoken Addiction

[I'll post the remaining bonus chapter for this book in my author column. My next book, Birds and Thorns, is about a love triangle. Feel free to add it to your collection.]

Gao Xiao and Chen Dongyi first met by chance on a snowy night in Beijing.

She'd carelessly forgotten her phone, and he helped her out of a tight spot.

When they left the convenience store, it turned out their homes were in the same direction.

"Shall we walk together?" the man asked.

His features seemed kissed by spring, gentle and vivid, melting the snow and wind all around them.

*

Gao Xiao saw Chen Dongyi again at the company's headquarters.

Only then did she learn that he was the group's newly hired director of innovative drug research and development, a PhD who had returned from overseas.

...The neighbor she'd run into late at night was an industry big shot? I was too blind to recognize a VIP. Goodbye.

But Gao Xiao didn't know then that she'd already stepped into turbulent undercurrents. Every chance encounter had been carefully planned.

*

Chen Dongyi often thought about the ten years he and Gao Xiao had missed.

On a distant, rainy day, a girl stood in the damp air and asked him, "Will you come back?"

His longing was buried too deep and hidden for too long, becoming an unspoken addiction Chen Dongyi could never confess.

*The main characters develop innovative drugs and expose the crimes of lawbreakers, in keeping with the theme of the times.

------ Coming Soon: Birds and Thorns ------

[One-sided love / love triangle, primarily set in the city, with a small portion at school]

"Li Yannuo is coming back to the country." At a high school reunion, someone mentioned it in passing.

When Wen Meng heard the name, the hand holding her wineglass trembled slightly. The man beside her slipped an arm around her waist and took the glass from her hand.

"How come I didn't know?" Liao Weiming asked with a smile.

He drank it down, his lips touching the bright red lipstick mark Wen Meng had left on the rim.

*

Summer when they were eighteen. The cicadas outside the classroom never stopped buzzing.

Wen Meng looked away from her workbook and cautiously glanced to her right. Her deskmate, Li Yannuo, had rolled up his sleeves, revealing a wrist tanned from playing basketball.

He was so focused on studying that all the girl could see was his handsome profile.

Thump.

A crumpled ball of paper hit Wen Meng in the back of the head, interrupting her bashful stare.

"How do you do the last problem?" asked Liao Weiming from the seat behind her.

He had a pair of unruly eyes and a handsome, charming face.

"Figure it out yourself." Wen Meng couldn't be bothered with him.

"You're so stingy," Liao Weiming said, then kicked Li Yannuo's chair across the aisle. "Hey, buddy, give me a hand."

A lifelong friendship and a love that had only just begun tangled together in a mess, leaving everyone caught between moving forward and backing away.

In that noisy summer filled with the sound of cicadas, no one ever took another step.

But birds will eventually spread their wings and fly forward.

Ten years later, when they meet again, he, she, and he are all no longer who they once were.

And this time, they find themselves caught in the same thorns once more.

Theme: I decide my own fate