Mango Tart

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As a little girl, Lu Ying was a crybaby, a troublemaker, spoiled, and greedy for treats. At five, over a mango tart, she got the boy next door lost.

He was gone for ten years.

Ten years later, Lu Ying had grown into a gentle, quiet, reserved young woman, and the boy next door finally came home.

Raised among the rough-and-tumble streets, Huo Congdu is prickly all over: cold, solitary, and always ready to fight. He also can't stand the little girl who keeps running after him.

Lu Ying wants to be nice to him, but he doesn't appreciate it at all. Instead, he bullies her.

Huo Congdu embarrasses her, leaves her locked in a storage room, and tramples on her sincere heart.

"Stop following me!" Huo Congdu is always saying that to her.

Later, Lu Ying really does stop following him.

The young man then shamelessly comes clinging to her, saying, "You've spent a whole year worrying about me. Surely you can keep it up for the rest of your life?"

Lu Ying looks at him with red-rimmed eyes.

Huo Congdu adds, "...I'll worry about you just as much in return."

Lu Ying doesn't know that when she meets Huo Congdu again ten years later, with dark eyes, long hair, and a white dress, she enters his life in the most dazzling way and takes root in his heart forever.

The boy, who has been adrift since childhood, doesn't dare lay a hand on a girl as bright as moonlight. Nor does he want her to treat him well out of guilt. So he faces her with the sharp thorns forged from his insecurity and awkwardness.

"The gods and Buddhas never save me. Lu Ying does."

Note: There was a reason he got lost.

2021.7.26

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Theme: Healing wounds with love.