Longing Heart, Timid Love

Shi Mengmeng is the sort of girl who looks like the perfect little angel. She gets through school without a hitch and becomes a teacher after graduation. From school straight into a career at school, she could spend her whole life without ever leaving her ivory tower. Her first love amounts to nothing more than holding hands, and lasts only a week. She goes straight from that to blind dates, making her the perfect wife material. But Shi Mengmeng doesn't like it. The word her blind dates praise her with most often is "virtuous." Shi Mengmeng hates it. Anyone who says that word immediately loses points. She's not looking to rebel or seek thrills, nor does she want to deliberately defy her parents or disrespect her elders. She just doesn't want people to think she's obedient and easy to control. Not even her parents. In fact, especially not her parents. Having other people hold the reins to your life is suffocating. From childhood onward, Shi Mengmeng has rebelled little by little: She befriends a girl who's the complete opposite of her; Deliberately avoids taking the public school-teacher exam in her own city; Treats elders who act like elders as elders, and elders who don't as trash; And gets together with Jiang Quan. A fair-skinned, pure-looking good girl who's turned bad in her parents' eyes x A handsome, top-notch guy, cold on the outside and warm within, with emotional baggage and the temperament of a big wolfdog. A little realistic, with everyday family life and all that. Coming Soon, Contemporary Romance: My Seasonal Boyfriend Blurb: Li Xiao, driven to the brink of baldness by her landlord and her job, gets laid off with a generous severance package. She struggles to hold back her wildly upturning smile, takes the money, and leaves. After arranging to have her tortoise and kitty transported, Li Xiao heads home in the middle of a heavy snowfall. Li Xiao grew up in this little house by the stream at the foot of the mountain, but she hasn't been back in five years, ever since her grandmother died. The wooden floorboards, scrubbed clean by the snow, reveal their rustic grain. Li Xiao walks barefoot across them, jumping up and down. Her hometown is full of the things Li Xiao loves: raising cats, tortoises, chickens, and geese; growing vegetables, flowers, and fruit trees. Delighted, Li Xiao digs two eggs out of the grass, only to come face-to-face with a familiar, gloomy countenance. 'Ah, I forgot about this guy.' It was wrong of Li Xiao to flirt with Qi Xing and then run off. But it was consensual, so he doesn't need to act like he's come to settle an old score, does he? Li Xiao collects a basket of eggs to compensate him for all those years of youth, but Qi Xing is too greedy. He takes the eggs and wants her, too. In spring, the grass grows thick and lush. The wooden steps outside Li Xiao's house are starting to decay, so Qi Xing repairs them one by one. In summer, the rain pours down. The roof tiles on Li Xiao's house are cracked and leaking, and the plaster is crumbling. Qi Xing climbs up to replace the tiles and paints the walls from a ladder. In autumn, the fruit ripens and the leaves fall. The courtyard is covered with thick layers of dead branches and yellow leaves. Qi Xing sweeps up the leaves for compost and picks fruit to make preserves. In winter, snow falls silently. The fruit trees in Li Xiao's courtyard need protecting from the cold, so Qi Xing makes a special trip back to wrap their trunks in hemp rope, layer by layer. After doing all that, all he gets from Li Xiao is: "Huh? I thought the village committee was taking care of it." Li Xiao: "By the way, how does a tattooed delinquent grow up to become a gloomy househusband who never leaves home?" Qi Xing: "Because I was used and discarded, so I turned into a pervert." Theme: Live well and make every day count!