During the summer vacation after ninth grade, her father brought home a boy and said, "There's no one left in his family. He'll live with us from now on."
This wasn't the first time Jiang Wu had seen Li Weigu.
Maybe every girl is drawn to a bad boy when she's young. He was wild and untamed, a rebel who defied convention. When she watched him sneak out the back door during evening study, she would always wonder where he was going.
Jiang Wu never expected the person she'd secretly fallen for to be that woman's son.
Before her feelings could turn into love, they became disappointment and hatred instead.
Her father told her to call him Big Brother.
She stared at him resolutely, lips pressed tight, and didn't say a word.
Later, Li Weigu was driven away by Jiang Wu.
His only request that day was for her to say something to him, anything at all. Even "1234," even the word "Get lost."
But she pressed her lips together even tighter.
He knew she hated him. He just hadn't realized she loathed him this much.
They had lived under the same roof for two years, and she had never paid him any attention or said a single word to him.
Seven years later, they met again.
Jiang Wu stood up to her father and bet on herself, finding someone to marry on a whim and sacrificing her own happiness. She never expected the person her friend introduced to be Li Weigu.
She was so shocked that she blurted out, "Li Weigu?"
He seemed to have come prepared. He wasn't surprised to see her at all. He calmly sat down and asked, "Which hospital cured you?"
She was baffled. "?"
He looked at the red of her lips and smiled lazily. "I thought you used to be mute."
"..."
-★-
She had once asked him why he wanted to marry her.
At the time, he had probably felt a little helpless, wondering how, after all these years, she could still be so stubborn.
More than anything, though, he felt sorry for her. Did she know that a girl could be too fierce and extreme? Something too rigid was easily broken. She must have faced many things she had to fight against to become the person she was now.
He wanted to raise her all over again.
Not to make her even better, but to teach her to love herself.
Until she learned how, he would use his own love to carefully make up for the love she was missing.
★
On the surface: gentle x unruly
In reality: two stubborn souls x a lovestruck romantic
Boarding school trope.
Happy ending and only one partner for each lead. School romance first, then city life.
Mutual unrequited love at school, angsty and bittersweet; a sweet, healing romance that starts with marriage in the city.
Li Weigu's name comes from Feng Zikai's line, "Fortunately, I came, so the mountain is not alone."
Theme: Strive to live
