It Never Snows in My City [Secret Crush]

The print edition is out now! Weibo: @Ye Qi Bu Tuoyan

--Blurb--

Years after graduation, Meng Fanyi attends her high school reunion.

The moment she opens the door, she spots Mo Yunhuai among the crowd.

He is already seated, surrounded by people congratulating him on returning from abroad. On the empty seat beside him rests a name card bearing her name.

They don't manage to say a single word to each other.

After a few rounds of drinks, everyone starts playing Truth or Dare.

After losing several rounds, Mo Yunhuai is asked about his first love. He answers slowly:

"She was my classmate. I confessed to her, and she accepted my love letter, but turned me down."

"I wrote in her yearbook, but later saw the page I'd written in the trash."

"After graduation, I told her I was going abroad. All she said was, 'Thank you for having liked me.'"

"Then, for some reason, she deleted me on WeChat."

For his final turn, he chooses dare and is told to ask his first love for her WeChat.

He turns to her and lightly clinks his glass against hers. "So, Meng Fanyi, can I have your WeChat?"

*

One day after they are married, Mo Yunhuai goes to the study to find the big box of notebooks from his youth.

He opens the wrong box and discovers all of Meng Fanyi's secrets from when she was young.

Inside, he finds the love letters he wrote to her, every photo of himself he'd posted on his social media, the drinks he'd bought for her, several jars of stars and folded paper cranes, a stack of thick, locked diaries, and application materials for a short-term exchange program...

A slip of paper drifts down by his feet. He picks it up:

"The snowy scenery in Toronto is beautiful,"

"but I'm in the south, where it never snows."

That evening, Meng Fanyi goes to the study to get a book and finds a love note from him tucked inside every volume.

Before she can collect all the sweet notes, he pulls her into his arms and kisses her long and passionately.

His hot breath surrounds them. She hears his hoarse voice by her ear:

"All I want is a handful of snow from your heart."

*

Sunny puppy-dog male lead versus seemingly cool, ultra-competitive female lead

PS:

1. One-on-one, both virgins, mutual pining, both deeply devoted.

2. There are misunderstandings, which will be resolved later.

3. School life in the first part, then city life. The plot serves the romance.

4. They don't confess before adulthood, and neither is in a relationship before they reunite.

---Coming Soon: "After I Saw My Favorite Star's Profile Visits on Weibo"

/1/ Xia Yi'er writes fanfiction for popular fandoms. She's famous for writing that is both unhinged and beautiful. Online, she spends her days crawling around in the shadows; offline, she's an introverted shut-in who has to hustle everywhere to cover her university expenses, pretending to be outgoing for the money.

The public display of profile visits on Weibo is the last straw. Just as she's about to leave the fandom, some kindhearted netizen buys her a VIP membership.

Then she sees visits from her favorite star, He Chu, in her Weibo list.

[He visited your profile frequently yesterday.]

[He visited your profile several times yesterday.]

After seven straight days of "frequent visits," they finally stop on the eighth day.

Before midnight, Xia Yi'er yawns and sends her favorite star a private message: [Hey, are you here to read your own fanfiction?]

He replies instantly: [Hello. Would you be willing to enter into a contractual relationship with me?]

Xia Yi'er: [?? Have you been hacked???]

/2/ The birthday banquet is a whirl of clinking glasses and lively conversation.

He Chu wears a polite but distant smile. A serious look spreads through his eyes as he offers his hand. "Miss Xia, would you care to dance with me?"

Just before they spin around, he suddenly lifts a hand and taps her between the brows. His voice is as languid and composed as ever. "Xia Yi'er, relax."

--No one hears her heart pounding.

After the banquet, she gets lost in the vast back garden.

In the dim light, she hears people murmuring: "It was just one dance. Given her background, Young Master He could never stay with her."

Cold rain suddenly pours down. Soaked and bedraggled, He Chu finally finds Xia Yi'er gazing up at the rain in a pavilion with Roman columns. He lets out an almost imperceptible sigh of relief and asks with exaggerated seriousness, "Admiring the rain?"

She turns to him, her eyes earnest. "He Chu, I know my place. I don't have any other feelings for you."

He Chu pauses, his tone nonchalant. "All right."

Behind his back, he grips the thick love letter in his hand, crumpling its edges until his fingertips turn white.

/3/ Later, someone uploads a video they happened to capture.

Beneath a Chinese tallow tree, He Chu, wearing a black trench coat, brushes the tree's seeds from the woman's hair and kisses her with focused intensity. The tendons in his neck stand out prominently.

After the kiss, his earlobes are bright red. He curls the back of his fingers against his lips, coughs as if to hide his embarrassment, and says in a slightly hoarse voice, "Xia Yi'er, will you marry me today?"

Xia Yi'er smiles and shakes her head. "Not a chance."

Netizen: [? Bro, who is this? Introduce us.]

He Chu tags her Weibo without hesitation, sounding arrogantly smug: [This is my wife. She just promised to write fanfiction about us for the rest of her life. You can't see it.]

Netizens: [?]

#Is this my unhinged and beautiful wife???#

#He Chu, I'll never forgive you for stealing my wife#

---Coming Soon: "Cicada Song Forbidden"

/1/

Yan Sijin has had a crush on the same boy for far too many years.

He's the pride of heaven, always at the top of the rankings in competitions and exams. His gaze is invariably tired and languid, yet he moves easily through a crowd, free and dazzling.

But no one knows that the two of them share a secret hideaway.

One day after school, the cicadas buzz noisily. Halfway along her route, a sudden downpour drenches her.

She rushes to the abandoned railway tracks she thinks of as their secret hideaway, only to find the boy standing there with an umbrella. His fingers are long and elegant, his gaze tired and languid, and his presence carries a bitter yet lingering sweetness.

He tilts the umbrella toward her, shielding her from the rain.

Their breaths mingle, and her heart flutters.

After that, they often share their secrets in silence, separated by a sheet-metal wall.

Yan Sijin has always known he doesn't belong here.

Sure enough, he later earns a recommendation to a top university and never comes back;

meanwhile, she hears that he has grown more and more dazzling, winning countless admirers and praise.

/2/

They reunite years later at a gathering for outstanding alumni.

The moment he looks her way, she averts her eyes.

He walks up to her, his tone mild, his manner refined and distinguished. "Miss Yan, it's a pleasure to meet you."

When someone asks about it, he says, "We met by chance. Miss Yan still owes me a promise."

No one knows that through thousands of days and nights, he has recalled, imagined, and reconstructed the date she never showed up for.

-

One day, Zhu Yu returns to their old haunt. In a pavilion beside the abandoned railway tracks, he finds a huge pile of letters sent to him many years ago. They are all signed--

Yan Sijin.

He suddenly remembers that he once joined the literature club and earnestly sought advice on how to write a love letter in the form of an argumentative essay.

As usual, the audience below the stage keeps teasing him.

It turns out she was also in the literature club, quietly watching him from the audience, with no idea that the legendary argumentative-essay love letter had always been written for her.

/3/

"I don't know how far apart ordinary people and geniuses are, and I don't think the arts and sciences are completely opposed to each other.

All I know is that I, an ordinary student of the arts, through unwavering effort, finally made it to the side of you, the so-called science genius.

At last, the distance between us is no longer 1,700 kilometers."

--From Yan Sijin's letter

--

"I'm waiting for my unrequited love to step into the light."

Theme: Study hard, and you may be able to do the things you once thought impossible.