A suspicious, paranoid creditor x a shamelessly laid-back debtor
Chi Youyu x Lu Fengyuan
Question: In the poorest year of your life, what shameless things did you do just to get by?
Answer: Thanks for the invite. I'm back in my hometown and just got off the plane. The poorest year was my second year of high school. My family had been fairly well-off, but one failed investment bankrupted us overnight. We had to mortgage our home, and couldn't even afford food. In a moment of stupidity, I came up with a terrible idea: I started dating a rich second-generation classmate, just so I could mooch a bite of the fancy custom bento his family's housekeeper brought him before evening study every night...
User A: I don't really get the logic here. If you just wanted food, wouldn't hitting on the cafeteria lady have been faster than hitting on a rich classmate?
OP replying to User A: I was too young back then. I thought I really was just short one bite of food. (This reply has been deleted.)
User B: So what happened after that?
OP replying to User B: Well... At first, I thought he was just dating me for fun. We were both getting what we wanted, so I didn't feel too bad about it.
Then right before the college entrance exams, he suddenly told me he was going to apply to the same university as me. He'd even found a place near the school and planned for us to move in together. He'd planned our future all the way through our hundredth birthdays.
I was terrified that if he found out my real motive, he'd get so angry he'd kill me. So the night after the exams, I changed my phone number, deleted all my social media accounts, and ran away in the middle of the night without even packing my things. I hid in another city for six years and didn't dare come home.
User C: What? That's extreme... So why did you go back now?
OP replying to User C: Um, well, I figured six years had passed, so he must have gotten over that ill-advised first love from his youth.
Then some old friends invited me to a high school reunion. I also remembered my ex always hated crowded events like that, so I worked up the nerve to come back.
User D: If nothing unexpected happens, then something unexpected is about to happen.
OP: ...And then he cornered me at the hotel entrance.
User E: [Starry-eyed]
OP: He looked like he wanted to kill me. I knew I was in the wrong, so I told him, "You can beat me up, just hit me hard enough to send me to the hospital for a month." He sneered and asked if I was trying the same old trick as in high school, trying to con him again. I answered honestly that I wasn't, because I couldn't afford next month's rent and needed to find somewhere to stay in advance. That successfully made him even angrier.
User F: OP, you've got a real talent for getting yourself killed... So where are you now? Did you really end up in the hospital?
OP: ...
OP: Nope.
OP: In a bed at his villa.
1. [Absolutely no switching the top and bottom, and no extreme character fans.] Comments like that will be deleted immediately. The mutual feelings between the leads are very obvious. Thanks for respecting that.
2. Both leads are virgins. Neither is perfect, so readers with high moral standards for protagonists should be cautious.
3. I may get carried away and add some melodrama.
Blurb dated 23.8.12
Theme: Never give up hope
