Finding a Lamp in a Dark Room

[Four or five more chapters until the main story is complete. Next up: Derailment or Black Rose]

"They are trapped in a dark room, and each is the other's light."

In 2015, during the noisy, cicada-filled days of the End of Heat, Chao En is forced to transfer to Xizhu Middle School after her parents' divorce.

She dislikes everything about her new school, especially her cold-faced, perpetually sleepy deskmate Yu Huai'an. They've met twice already, and she caused him to break his leg. He dislikes her just as much.

Chao En does her best to avoid him and focuses on her studies. But one day, when she returns to the classroom to pick up her copybook, she catches him being cornered by the school's most beautiful girl.

With red-rimmed eyes, the girl demands in desperation, "What kind of person do you even like?!"

For once, Chao En doesn't leave. She hides her shadow behind her and hears him answer with unusual patience, "Short hair, almond eyes, bad handwriting."

Standing outside the door, Chao En touches her newly shortened hair, blinks her pretty almond eyes, and looks at the copybook in her hands...

She freezes like a statue.

Next up: Derailment or Black Rose

[Blurb for Derailment]

When Jiang Zhi is in her first year of high school, her father brings home the son of a deceased friend. Suspecting that he's her father's illegitimate son, Jiang Zhi blocks his way after school and warns him coldly, "At school, don't say you know me. At home, stay the hell away from me."

Chen Siye has a cigarette dangling from his lips and his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders. He smiles and says, "Fine."

After the college entrance exams, Jiang Zhi sits in front of her computer, scratching her head and fretting over which major to choose so she can just barely get into A University. Turning around, she sees Chen Siye, who has already been admitted early, sitting at the head of the bed playing games like none of this concerns him.

Her eyes redden. She walks over, looking aggrieved. "Can't you just, "

"No." Chen Siye cuts her off. After looking at each other for two seconds, he falls silent, then gets up and tosses her out of the bedroom along with the throw pillow.

Later on,

They meet again at A University. When someone asks about their relationship, Jiang Zhi thinks of his nasty behavior the night before and scoffs, "I don't know him."

That night at home, Chen Siye locks the bedroom door behind him and bites her lip hard. "You call this not knowing me?"

Happy ending / the leads are not blood-related / temporary stay trope

[Blurb for Black Rose]

Tan Shushu's mother doesn't love her and her father doesn't raise her. She's only brought back to the Tan family just before coming of age. She's beautiful, flamboyant, willful, and full of flaws.

The eldest son of the Jiang family, Jiang Chirang, is thirty and unmarried. A Harvard graduate, he is as elegant as a magnolia and as refined and gentle as a scholar. His greatest pleasure is reading books and drinking tea.

The two couldn't be more different.

Everyone thinks Jiang Chirang is just putting up with her, and that divorce is only a matter of time.

At first, Tan Shushu thinks so too.

Until two male students get into a fight over her, and Jiang Chirang is summoned to the dean of A University's law school office as her "guardian."

One of the students takes Tan Shushu's hand with tender affection and declares his love for her in front of Jiang Chirang, her "guardian."

Jiang Chirang is silent for a moment, then walks over and pulls Tan Shushu behind him.

He looks at the student and says, "Do you think you can touch my wife's hand?"

-

That night, Tan Shushu is summoned downstairs from her hiding place in the study.

Jiang Chirang puts down his newspaper and looks at her coolly.

Tan Shushu feels a shiver under his gaze and quickly speaks first. "Jiang Chirang, listen to me. This is, "

Jiang Chirang pulls her into his arms and buries his face in her snow-white shoulder and neck, breathing in greedily as he struggles to rein in his irrationality and keep his composure.

Forced to sit on his lap, Tan Shushu is at a loss. He grips her waist with both hands, bites her ear, and lets out a soft scoff. "What's so great about some callow kid like that?"

-

Tan Shushu has always thought she was a joke in everyone's eyes. Later, she realizes that in Jiang Chirang's eyes, she is a one-of-a-kind black rose.

Jiang Chirang would rather keep his thorns and have his hands covered in wounds than strip away the rose's natural beauty.

He says, "In my barren land, you are the last rose."

Tan Shushu remembers those words for the rest of her life.

In my barren land, you are the last rose., Pablo Neruda

2023.5.21

Theme: Love and courage