Fireworks

Premise: [Entire story is free]

A friendly warning: Before opening this story, please read the warnings below. If anything makes you uncomfortable, leave. Trust me, the story itself will make you even more uncomfortable.

1. Timeline warnings:

[Told on two timelines, with many flashbacks]

[The male lead’s perspective follows the present, while the female lead’s perspective follows the past. A chapter title bearing one character’s name means that character’s perspective takes up more of the chapter.]

[If you can’t accept this or find it hard to follow, please stop reading. The timelines are interwoven throughout, and by the ending they even overlap in a way that may drive you mad. Since I’m writing this purely for love, I won’t be making any changes.]

2. Narrative warnings:

[As above, the male and female perspectives are split roughly fifty-fifty.]

[The author likes to repeatedly describe little mundane things that she considers essential.]

[Some readers have said these little things are completely unnecessary.]

3. Plot warnings:

[See the comments or long reviews for feedback.]

4. Warnings about the author:

[Because the author wrote this story purely for love and didn’t use money to ease the pain of receiving bad reviews, she may show her ugly side in the comments and author’s notes. This may include being especially overbearing, extremely cocky, ridiculously self-confident, wildly arrogant, utterly unreasonable, and incredibly conceited.]

In light of all the above, please consider whether this story is worth your time.

Blurb follows.

Xu Panxia grew up scraping by with her mother. In summer, she wore a school uniform washed until it faded. In winter, her shoes split at the seams, and she often came home with her feet soaked through.

Her classmates deliberately or casually kept their distance, and she never made a single close friend.

Ye Jialan was the one exception.

They both came from single-parent families, but Ye Jialan was well-off, polite, and humble, the model student in everyone’s eyes.

He often brought her candy and cookies, gave her shoes that fit, and patiently helped her with her studies.

Their relationship should have ended there, if not for Ye Jialan’s father making advances toward Xu Panxia’s mother.

-

When her mother sent her to stay at Ye Jialan’s home for a while, Ye Jialan glared coldly at her. No matter how much his father pressured him, he refused to call her “Auntie.”

Xu Panxia felt painfully awkward.

Ye Jialan’s expression was indifferent. He didn’t look at her even once.

Xu Panxia thought he hated her, and her eyes dimmed at once.

She had no idea.

Beneath the neat trousers covering his right thigh, Ye Jialan had her name tattooed on his skin.

Warnings:

1. They are never registered on the same household record. The leads’ parents never marry and have no romantic feelings for each other. The father’s advances have another motive.

2. They are each other’s one and only, without exception. Two-year age gap. Ye Jialan took time off school because of an illness.

Theme: Study hard and keep improving