Secretly Falling for You

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[Currently updating: Baoyi (Age Gap x Reconciliation After a Breakup)! Blurb below! Please add it to your reading list!]

[Same series: Shattered Romance, complete]

| Secret crush becomes mutual love / She falls first / He pursues her later

“I want to go back and see whether I miss home, or whether I miss her.”, Shen Shixie

-

Half a year after starting high school, Jiang Yin fell in love with Shen Shixie at first sight.

He was tall and straight as bamboo, with broad shoulders, a languid air, and a hint of cockiness.

His thin, pale eyelids had faint creases. His skin was so fair he looked like a pampered young master who never lifted a finger.

Jiang Yin knew they were worlds apart and never dreamed of a romance with him. But they became seatmates, one in front of the other, and the feelings she kept hidden began to surge within her.

She thought this was the quiet beginning of a beautiful dream.

But fate had other plans, and her carefully concealed crush ended in the summer of their graduation.

Shen Shixie had always lived freely. He cared little for affection that merely added to his good fortune, and could not understand the pain of wanting something he could not have.

During the years they lost touch, Shen Shixie lived it up abroad and seemed to have long forgotten her. Yet, to everyone’s surprise, the haughty young master of the Shen family returned home. He said it was because he missed home.

Unaware of it himself, he fell hopelessly into the tenderness that was Jiang Yin and surrendered completely.

-

Years later, they met again. Jiang Yin had delicate brows and gentle eyes, wore a simple, elegant dress, and a few strands of her dark hair fluttered in the evening breeze.

Shen Shixie’s voice was low. “Jiang Yin, third time’s the charm, so I came back.”

Jiang Yin looked up in surprise. Through the mottled shadows of bamboo leaves, the man stood tall, his features striking. A few seconds later, her gaze returned to calm. She rose with cool reserve, as if they had just met.

Shen Shixie quietly worked his way back into her life. Word spread through their circle that he had a woman in his heart, that he had fallen hard. But that woman coolly insisted they could only be friends.

His pride was nowhere to be found. He pulled her into his arms with a strong arm and rasped, “Jiang Yin, are you really going to draw a line between us?”

Only later did he learn what she had felt. The secret longing of a shy young girl had finally come into the light.

He stood frozen for a long time, his voice hoarse. “Yinyin, I came too late.”

At seventeen, Jiang Yin decided to forget the boy in her heart.

Later, she got two tattoos: slender bamboo on her shoulder blade and a number behind her ear.

At twenty-seven, the boy at the edge of her vision had become her husband, forever occupying the center of it.

[Gentle but strong x Slightly cocky young master]

Note: There are no romantic or intimate scenes before the characters become adults.

| Do not read this as reflecting real people / Many fictional details / The title is a type of tulip

| The leads’ names were inspired by: “A stream reflects sparse flowers among bamboo, while a soft chant drifts down the slanting path,” from Ten Poems on Plum Blossoms Among Bamboo, Written in Reply to Wu Boyong, by Shi Shaosong

| Blurb written in 2021, uploaded on June 26, 2022

| Comments on the old story will be closed

Theme: Love yourself before loving someone else. May you receive everything you wish for.