Black-on-the-inside, crazy top student seme x black-on-the-outside, pure-hearted, goofy loyal puppy uke
On the eve of the college entrance exams, Qin Le briefly lost his sight from overwork.
On June 8, his classmates walked into the exam hall carrying their stationery.
Qin Le walked out of the hospital with his eyes bandaged.
His bright, orderly life was thrown into disarray.
His always-gentle, devoted father
had messages from another woman on his phone.
His mother grabbed his hand, hair wild and disheveled,
and cried to him on the verge of a breakdown:
[If you hadn't failed to get into college, I could be divorced from him by now.]
Qin Le took half a step back.
He knew he was running away.
But if there was an abyss behind him, he'd rather jump into it now.
#
"I've been watching you for ages."
Shen Jiayun held a fishing rod in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Though they were about the same age, Shen Jiayun had an unmistakably rough, roguish air.
"What's up? Thinking of doing something stupid?"
"Want your buddy here to talk you through it?"
Qin Le slowly turned his head,
looked at the empty bucket beside him,
and said in a calm voice, though his words were asking for a punch:
"If you can't catch anything, go home already. The fish here are all full."
#
"Seventy yuan will get you a long-distance bus ticket to another province."
"For 120 yuan, you can take a train to Beijing."
"Qin Le, I've got seventy thousand yuan on me right now."
How many years would it take to escape this little town?
Qin Le had never thought about it before he met Shen Jiayun.
"If you can't take it anymore, run away. I'll go with you."
That hand was filthy, with a thin layer of calluses,
rough in a way that didn't seem right for a nineteen-year-old, as if it had weathered countless storms.
It was completely at odds with the boy's radiant face.
Qin Le stared at him.
For some reason, as if possessed, he took the hand Shen Jiayun held out to him.
Setting: Jiangsu, 2012
Qin Le (seme): gloomy and twisted inside, a cheerful, healthy-looking little hedgehog on the outside
Shen Jiayun (uke): A working emperor who can make milk tea with a shaker and sling cement at a construction site; a swaggering bro on the outside, a fool at heart
Theme: A thousand-mile journey to deliver melons, and the bond it creates