Night Talk

[Complete]

On a rainy night, Chen Yanchuan tossed Lu Zhizhi a bag of bread as he walked out of a convenience store.

The girl was a bedraggled mess. She casually crushed the can of cola in her hand and flashed him a bright, toothy grin. "Thanks, mister."

The next morning, he saw her at his front door again.

Gathering up the wet clothes spread across the ground, Lu Zhizhi yawned. "Morning, mister."

Chen Yanchuan said nothing and led her inside.

-

Lu Zhizhi fell in love with her friend's uncle.

She knew he was solitary and gentle, and that he didn't know how to say no. So a stray dog like her only had to act a little pitiful to stay by his side without a second thought.

He couldn't bear to let her sleep on the sofa, so he held her as she slept. He let her make a mess of his studio, and praised her as the best model.

Lu Zhizhi craved his warmth, the breath he let fall against her hair, and, more than anything, his boundless indulgence and faint smiles.

So she carefully played the little girl who needed looking after, afraid he'd notice her complicated feelings, but unable to stop wanting more. Her possessiveness took root and grew like a vine.

She wanted him to fall in love with her of his own accord.

-

But she never knew.

On the walk home from the convenience store that night, when Chen Yanchuan heard footsteps following him, the corner of his mouth had already lifted in a subtle smile.

Time to close the net.

-

Contemporary setting / one-on-one / happy ending / mutual seduction

A beautiful, scheming artist who only pretends to be gentle x a gloomy girl. Neither of them is normal. Eight-year age gap.

Romance-focused, not much plot. The author's tastes run wild. A short story under 150,000 words.

The plot won't undergo major revisions during serialization. Revision notices are for typo fixes, minor adjustments, or bug fixes, and can be ignored.

-

My next book: This Drowning

Everyone in Beijing's second-generation social circle knows that Xia Fengwei likes Lu Juesheng. She's pursued him for years, but never gotten anywhere.

He was a spirited, carefree young man, always changing the people around him, yet he had never once spared her a glance.

Then the Lu family fell from power. The once-proud, flamboyant young man vanished overnight. When he returned, he was a different person.

Rumor had it that Lu Juesheng, a rising star in business, was a gentleman on the surface, but ruthless and extreme in his dealings, willing to do anything. No one could see his true feelings.

Yet this coldhearted man had stayed away from women for years for the sake of one woman.

Xia Fengwei knew perfectly well who that woman was: his first love, the one he could never forget, the only woman he had ever truly loved, his white moonlight.

-

She met Lu Juesheng again at his first love's wedding.

The man raised his glass toward the bride onstage, smiling with cold desolation.

Xia Fengwei approached him without drawing attention, only to hear him ask in a mild voice:

"Attorney Xia, would getting in the way of someone else's marriage really count as a crime?"

At that, Xia Fengwei's eyes reddened. She stormed out, suddenly realizing that the person she had pursued so desperately was nothing but a joke.

Time had passed, yet he would rather ruin his first love's happiness than so much as look at her.

-

That night, a friend demanded of Lu Juesheng, "You finally got to see her. Why didn't you tell her?"

"Give it time."

"Aren't you afraid she'll lose hope and marry someone else?"

After a long silence, the man stubbed out his last cigarette. Eyes closed, he spoke softly.

"I won't give her that chance."

-

Everyone said Lu Juesheng was a lunatic who would gamble even with his own life.

But when it came to Xia Fengwei, he couldn't afford to take that gamble.

Still, he had never intended to let someone else have her.

Even if, in the end, he would be red-eyed, clutching the hem of her clothes and begging her over and over:

"Awei, don't go."

-

A stubborn, proud little rose x a deep, restrained, smiling tiger

Childhood sweethearts / mutual devotion / outrageous melodrama / a groveling arc

Contemporary setting, one-on-one, happy ending. The first love is a fake-out.