Toward the Light

1

At sixteen, Yu Nanxing met a boy with severe prosopagnosia in a quiet seaside town.

Back then, he was the town's rabid dog, someone everyone kept their distance from. Born without the capacity to feel, he was gloomy as the damp moss clinging to a cliff face that had not seen sunlight in ages.

Everyone told her to stay away from him, but Yu Nanxing insisted on provoking him again and again.

When she heard he couldn't recognize people's faces, she became even more determined to make him remember hers.

She tried everything she could think of, only to get a cold, "Get lost."

At first, no one believed she could tame Xie Jin, that vicious dog.

But no one expected that the boy who fought like he didn't care if he lived or died would one day put on a clean white shirt and sit in front of Yu Nanxing with a scowl, memorizing his lessons.

On New Year's Eve, he even ran all over town to buy every firework he could find, then lowered his head and gently lit them for her.

2

In the midst of a rainstorm, in a dim, empty room, the boy maliciously forced the cigarette smoke from his mouth into hers.

"Pull me up, or come down with me. Pick one."

At the time, Yu Nanxing secretly thought that a cold-blooded monster could never learn how to love someone.

It was only much later that she found out he had secretly kept a hair tie she had used, and carefully worn it on his right wrist for many years.

When the Greenland shark, lonely and adrift in frigid waters, finally encounters the snow dragon swimming around in a temperature-controlled aquarium, it is the one brief glimmer of light and stirring of the heart in its long, dark life, and it will happen only once.

My next book will be called Concealing One's Talents. Please add it to your favorites!

1

Back in middle school, a tall, lean boy transferred into the class next door. He had monolids, a cold gaze, and few words. He never wore his uniform, always dressed in black, and spent most of his time sleeping at his desk.

Like the other girls, Xue Yuening would pretend to go to the bathroom between classes, clutching her textbook as she hurried past his window with a flushed face.

But she never dared look at him openly.

On graduation day, she watched the girls go up one by one with red faces to give him love letters, only to be driven away by his indifference, just as expected.

Xue Yuening waited until the evening clouds were ablaze before finally working up the courage to run over and call his name for the first time.

"C-Chen Zhuo."

In the evening glow, the boy's fingers paused as he lit a cigarette. He raised the corner of his eye and glanced over at her expressionlessly.

His gaze lingered for a second on the jar of paper stars in her arms. Then he casually pointed away. "Go play somewhere else."

The seed called "love" in her heart had barely sprouted before it withered.

2

After graduating, she spent three years drifting around Guangzhou without getting anywhere. On the day she was debating whether to end her lease and return to her hometown, fate took an unexpected turn: she ran into those familiar eyes in the stairwell.

That night, Xue Yuening posted an urgent plea for help on Douban: "My roommate is the boy I had a crush on in middle school. What should I do?!"

One day, long afterward, someone happened to see her post history. He immediately registered an account and carefully replied to everyone in the thread: "Thanks, everyone. We're together now."

After crossing the river of all those long years, every bittersweet girlish longing finally found its happy ending.

3

One night before they got together, the power went out. The man was about to leave for overtime at the office when Xue Yuening couldn't help grabbing the edge of his sleeve. Looking pitiful, she said, "Could you not go? It's so dark here. I'm scared."

At that, he raised an eyebrow and gave a quiet scoff. "Am I a light bulb?"

Later, when Xue Yuening gave him the silent treatment, the shameless man cut the power, took his pillow, and knocked on her door. With an earnest expression, he said, "I don't mind being your light bulb."

Bonus scene:

With the high school entrance exams approaching, the dean was determined to crack down on the unhealthy trend of young romance. Naturally, his first target was Chen Zhuo, whose handsome face had turned the hearts of half the girls in the grade upside down.

Dragged into the office halfway through a nap to be lectured, the boy let the words go in one ear and out the other, his eyes drooping, until the dean started asking indirectly who else seemed to be falling in love.

He narrowed his eyes slightly and, without a moment's hesitation, quickly wrote down several names.

They were exactly the boys who had been pursuing Xue Yuening most aggressively at the time.

Moral: Study hard and keep improving every day.