Passing Wind

Coming next: Ten Years Like Daylight, Rotten Heart

Xia Ran never thought she'd meet Jin Sirang again at Tong Tower.

Looking at the aloof, refined man across from her, she softly called, "Brother."

Through a haze of pale blue smoke, his gaze was as cold and hard as the light reflected from the silver pin buckle on a belt. A moment later, he left without looking back.

Xia Ran thought he had completely forgotten her, until one night he held her tight, kissed her lips, and let his damp touch wander unhurriedly across her lower back.

After a long while, he asked in a hoarse, uneven voice, "In all these years, who else has kissed you like this?"

She suddenly remembered being fourteen, when she moved into the Jin home with her mother.

The dark green T-shirt stretched across the boy's body, the bones at his shoulders sharply outlined. His gaze now was just the same, like rocks weathered by the sea, jagged and cutting.

Then came the summer after the college entrance exams. They were in the same room. She tilted her head slightly, while the blazing sunlight beyond the gauze curtain stung her eyes until they watered. He wiped the moisture from her eyes with his dry lips.

Sweat traced their narrow waists and gathered together, its heat rising into wisps of mist.

Bookshop owner x forensic pathologist | Nonlinear narrative | Happy ending, both virgins

1. Their relationship begins when they are adults. They are from a blended family, but their parents never legally married. The leads get together after the parents break up.

2. A little mystery, but this is not a crime investigation novel. Romance first, plot second.

--Ten Years Like Daylight--

Lin Ting loved Pei Ji for ten whole years.

To her, he was the fine sweat clinging to the back of her neck on a hot summer night, an umbrella offered just in time in a torrential downpour, and the culprit behind the flustered beating of her heart.

She always instinctively wanted to take something from him, sometimes his gaze, sometimes the sleeve of his school uniform.

Later, they all became unattainable daydreams from her youth.

Ten years later, by a stroke of coincidence, Lin Ting met Pei Ji again.

Someone mentioned her, but he looked confused and asked, "Who is Lin Ting?"

Her heart pounded, and she came to her senses as if waking from a dream.

As it happened, after that day, they crossed paths more and more often.

She tried to convince herself she saw him as an ordinary friend, but she always lost her resolve beneath his smiling gaze.

It turned out that someone you slowly forgot with time was someone you couldn't forget after seeing again.

At dawn on the day she decided to give up for good, the cold seawater spread over her feet, making the warmth at her wrist feel all the more distinct.

She turned her head.

The dim yellow light gradually widened, its glow turning a brilliant red and illuminating his dark eyes.

"Lin Ting."

Pei Ji looked at her steadily, his voice low. "This time, I'll be the one to hold on to you."

-

To Pei Ji, Lin Ting had once been merely the deskmate he had never met while recovering at home in his first year of high school, and a stranger he had seen only a few times after they were assigned to different classes.

One day ten years later, he unexpectedly discovered that her WeChat contact name for him was "No Man's Land." The first thing he thought of was Eason Chan's song:

"The worst crime in this world is being too easily moved."

It was only when he sorted through his high school photos that he noticed someone in the inconspicuous corners always looking toward him.

That hidden, aching gaze made his chest burn. Only then did he understand what "No Man's Land" meant.

-In a world no one knows about, I love you most.

-

Lin Ting's unrequited love began in early summer and ended in midsummer, spanning years.

On the day the first snow fell, Pei Ji gave her a grand confession of love in return.

[Gentle x roguish and cool | end-of-life care worker x down-and-out race car driver]

Theme: Be brave and pursue love.