Night Wishes

[The Dragon Boy Came Back as a Big Shot to Marry Me]

Nan Lu knew Jiang Yizhou by reputation. They said he was gloomy and cold, with a violent temper. He wasn't the school bully, but he was worse than one, the top menace feared by students and dreaded by teachers.

Their lives had nothing to do with each other until one day, after school, Nan Lu stumbled upon a brawl.

The dragon boy was being beaten by more than a dozen thugs, yet not a trace of his defiance or scorn had left his face.

Suddenly, the broken streetlight blazed to life. Nan Lu stood right in the brightest part of its glow.

Jiang Yizhou looked at her too. She wore a white dress, the light falling all around her, yet she shone brighter than the light itself. Their eyes met. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and said, "Get lost."

On the night after the college entrance exams ended, he pulled her into a corner. Flames burned in the young man's eyes, and his low, trembling voice slipped into her ear, full of careful hesitation. "Can I kiss you, just once?"

Nan Lu pushed him away. "No. Can you act normal for once?"

Jiang Yizhou: "I can't act normal when I'm around you."

Meeting you means I'll be devoted to you for the rest of my life.

You're the breeze I've gathered all spring. In the dark, hopeless years of my life, you're the bright moon, shining without even knowing it.

Nan Lu had always followed the rules. Even her youth was calm and quiet. Then, the summer she turned seventeen, Jiang Yizhou appeared, and her life was thrown into turmoil, like flowers blown by a wild wind into the wilderness, where everything came to life again after the wildfire swept through.

In the many forms of life, the masses only ever saw one side of him. Only she knew his burning passion and all the beauty within him. But when he came, he brought wind and rain, and when he left, he vanished without a sound.

Years later, just as Nan Lu had finally returned to the life laid out for her, he appeared again.

Reading Guide:

1. He secretly loves her, then has to work hard to win her back. The male lead is not normal.

2. A healing, sweet romance. Believe it or not.

3. Slow to warm up, with many liberties taken and some differences from reality.

4. The leads' names come from the line "Yizhou gazes toward the southern foothills" in Three Poems Composed While Boating on the Jushui, Using Han's Rhyme for Boating on the Nanxi Stream, by Li Fu of the Song Dynasty.

5. Blurb written on March 3, 2022.

Theme: Don't wither, even in the dark.