Lost Along the Way

Cool, aloof top student who pretends to be proper x Unruly school bully who's genuinely haughty

Lin Guzhi's childhood looked enviable on the surface, but was broken underneath.

“I got my father's love and my mother's love, but I'll never have their love for each other. But it's fine, as long as things look all right from the outside.”

On the day his high school entrance exam results came out, his father died. He could no longer fool himself. “My grades were the only thing that could make my parents laugh together. Now it seems like that doesn't matter anymore...”

“I don't like the sea, because it goes on forever.” He began to hate and resent things that had no happy ending. He even started to resent his mother's coldness toward his father. “My dad was holding the necklace he'd had made for her when he died, but she couldn't even bring herself to cry.”

It sounds like a melodrama. He was born into a wealthy family. His parents came together for business reasons. He had a comfortable childhood and wonderful friends, but everything fell apart when his father died... “It's so ridiculous. Sometimes I wish our family really had been as harmonious as people thought.” But it was only a fantasy.

Gu Nian's life had always gone smoothly. At school, he was a role model for his teachers and the person countless girls strived to emulate.

But his deceased parents were a wound that would never heal, raw and impossible to mend. “It's my birthday today. Why hasn't Dad come home yet?” “Your father's working at the station. Be good, Niannian.” He nodded quietly, then sneaked a piece of cake to his room while his mother wasn't looking, hoping to save it for his father's late-night snack.

He waited all night, and the cake waited with him. His father never came. He didn't resent his father. He was proud of him.

“My father was a police officer, but he died.”

How many criminals would hold a grudge against a police officer? There was always someone.

A criminal his father had arrested came to the building where Gu Nian lived after getting out of prison.

One fire killed his father, who had come home early to prepare a surprise, and his mother, who was cooking in the kitchen. “I did resent my parents once. I don't blame them for not always being there for me. I blame them for coming home that day.”

Gu Nian was taken in by his aunt in Nanyang, but insisted on renting a place of his own. “When they were alive, I was already living alone in an empty house. I'm used to it.” He began to shut himself away.

But the boys were about to start at a new school, begin new lives, meet new people, and discover new sides of themselves.

It took some adjusting at first, but the process was unexpectedly sweet. The two boys, who had never fit in with their class, became deskmates and turned out to be unexpectedly harmonious and perfect for each other??

“Zhi, there's definitely something going on between you and Gu Nian!”

“Bullshit! We... we're innocent!”

“Ni... Nian, you and Zhi...”

“He's my boyfriend.”

Theme: Growing up.