He Said He'd Behave

After her family fell on hard times, Shi Jia left the capital where she'd lived for seventeen years and moved to a tiny backwater town, where she and her grandmother depended on each other.

At noon, her grandmother asked her to take some homemade chicken soup to their neighbor, who lived alone.

Shi Jia went next door and knocked. The door was opened by a tall, lean young man with a lonely, icy air about him.

Her grandmother said he was Pei Bei, a neighbor they were very close to.

But an hour earlier, right in front of him, Shi Jia had just had his best friend hold a knife to her throat and threaten her into dropping the police report.

*

Pei Bei was a notorious young thug in the small town. He formed gangs, got into fights, smoked and drank. Everyone said he was a promising kid who'd ruined himself.

Shi Jia didn't believe that. She thought Pei Bei could be a good person.

Just like that afternoon, when the sun shone brightly outside and cicadas buzzed noisily. Pei Bei finished an exam paper at the desk and held it up for her to see. His dark eyes brimmed with a clear, bright smile as he told her, "Shi Jia, look. I can be good."

Yes, he'd said he'd be good.

Shi Jia had always thought she first met Pei Bei on the day she arrived alone in the small town to live with her grandmother. Later, Pei Bei told her that whenever she'd visited the town with her parents for the New Year, a boy from the neighboring house would peek out of the window to watch her.

A down-on-her-luck but resilient good girl × a fierce, icy wild boy

Probably a story about redemption

Theme: Study hard and build a fortune.