The Seventh Floor

- The novel is complete -

[Upcoming novel: Lonely Isle. Blurb below. Please add it to your collection!]

Back in college, Jiang Wei was wild and reckless. She was beautiful and bold, like a wild rose covered in thorns. Her admirers could line up from the cafeteria entrance all the way to the dormitory.

Yet she didn't like any of them. Instead, she went after a younger student herself. He was supposedly the famous aloof heartthrob of the Finance Department, and a real challenge to win over.

Someone asked what she saw in him. With a cigarette between her lips, she said nonchalantly, "He's handsome, and he has abs."

Her best friend rolled her eyes. "Please. You're just after something new."

They did break up in the end.

*

When they met again, Jiang Wei had removed the tattoo from her wrist and gotten a perm in a neat, obedient style. She sat in a noisy, dimly lit bar, facing the blind date her family had arranged for her.

As luck would have it, the bar belonged to the younger man she'd dumped.

In a narrow, dim corridor, she was cornered by the door. Ji Han took the cigarette she'd just smoked, lowered his head, and calmly put it to his lips, right over the bright red lipstick mark.

Jiang Wei froze. "When did you learn to smoke?"

Ji Han breathed out and turned to look at her. "Only you are allowed to become well-behaved, and I'm not allowed to turn bad?"

*

Ji Han once loved a girl without holding anything back. In his twenties, she was the only person he'd ever loved so much that it nearly drove him mad.

She liked drinking, so he opened a bar.

She liked Chen Li, so he named the bar "Seventh Floor."

He'd heard her sing Chen Li's song "Seventh Floor." Back then, she sat by the roadside with a guitar in her arms, humming each word. She was so beautiful it seemed unreal, so beautiful it drove him mad.

"Let me drink a cup of poison called delusion/Let me drown in a rendezvous planned long ago/Let me make a fool of myself amid the scenery/Be offered up/Then dare to ask for more"

Sadly, in the end, he still couldn't pluck that wild rose by the stem.

But that's all right. He can still ask for more, one more time.

* Wild, unrestrained woman x aloof heartthrob

* Older woman-younger man romance

[Important content notes]

1. The heroine's good behavior in the blurb is an act.

2. The hero doesn't actually smoke.

3. The descriptions of the perfumer profession are based on information online. Please point out any errors.

- Weibo: @Jian He Sheng

[Upcoming novel: Lonely Isle. Blurb]

When the rain started, Chen Qingyu had just finished fighting someone.

Blood from the corner of his mouth dripped onto his school uniform, staining the white fabric in a grotesque way. Then an umbrella appeared over his head, and someone offered him a packet of clean tissues.

"Are you okay?"

Chen Qingyu looked up and saw Meng Xiyin beneath the umbrella. She wore a clean school uniform, her face pale and pretty, her eyes as cute as crescent moons.

He instinctively wiped his hand on the hem of his uniform, then hesitated before reaching for the tissue in her hand.

"Yinyin, what are you doing here?" Someone ran over and pulled Meng Xiyin away.

The newcomer glared at him with contempt. "Stay away from people like him."

"I..." Meng Xiyin tried to explain, but the other person had already dragged her out of the alley. "Come on. Auntie called and told us to hurry home for dinner."

The girl's footsteps faded at the mouth of the alley, leaving only the droning sound of the rain.

Chen Qingyu knew that boy. Zhao Jiashu, student council president, always first in the year, and a favorite of all the teachers.

He lived in the same residential compound as Meng Xiyin. They had grown up together, childhood friends.

He called her Yinyin.

*

Instinct is the hardest thing to restrain, just like his love for Meng Xiyin, growing wildly in an abyss no one else could see.

So he fights for her, gets hurt for her, makes a fool of himself for her, and lets the whole world despise him for her.

All because he wants to reach that light.

The light named Meng Xiyin.

* Love triangle, salvation from the abyss vs childhood sweethearts. The male lead is Chen Qingyu.

Theme: Finding fulfilling love