Defeated by the Heatwave

Coming soon: "Slowly, Life Takes Root." Blurb follows this novel's blurb. Please add it to your collection~

"So even someone frozen through and through can still lose to a heat wave."

A seemingly cold, flirtatious fox of a man × a seemingly composed girl with her own little schemes

*

For years, Wen Xin followed an animal rescue team, whether watching lions on the African savanna or rescuing dolphins at sea. She always carried a yellowed notebook. On the first page was her secret, covered in Gu Yusen's exam paper barcodes.

She pretended her confession after the college entrance exams was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. He believed her and accepted with equal nonchalance. Only she knew that day her heart had pounded like a drum.

When summer passed and the heat wave faded, she woke from her dream, and the two of them went their separate ways, one north and one south.

When they met again, he was still the most dazzling person in the most brilliant of venues. His youthful awkwardness had faded, and his features now carried a touch of maturity. Everyone surrounded the rising tech tycoon as if he were the moon among stars.

In the dim parking garage, Wen Xin, a little dazed, pressed him against a car door and said, "Mr. Gu, then teach me. This time, I'll pursue you properly."

He turned her down flat. A few days later, someone saw Wen Xin standing at a distance from him outside the Civil Affairs Bureau. Each of them held a red marriage certificate.

*

Everyone said the Gu family's heir was cold and uninterested in romance. But his close friends knew that in high school, Gu Yusen used to take the long way around half the building just to watch a girl get water.

He didn't bring her out in public until after the college entrance exams, and then he guarded her fiercely. Only Gu Yusen himself knew that he could barely handle her direct advances. Her little fox tail had shown, and he was more than willing to let it.

But she left without a backward glance.

She was gone, yet he remained as unruffled as ever. Someone called him a cold-blooded animal. Holding a smooth Guanyin pendant in his palm, he smiled and accepted the label. It was fine. He had seen the sun.

*

While she watched lions in Africa, he went to the Arctic to rescue polar bear cubs and watch the glaciers melt. Gu Yusen knew she was afraid of the cold.

Later, with the mountain sealed off by snow, he saw the Buddha pendant around her neck. It had been carved from the same piece of stone as his Guanyin.

By the glowing hearth, in a room full of warmth and tenderness, she curled up in his arms and said, "Gu Yusen, in our next life, I'll be a little squirrel, and you can be a big tree. How about it?"

"All right."

This time, the sun wouldn't leave.

1. They are each other's first love. Happy ending~

2. The leads only get together after they are adults and have finished the college entrance exams.

3. Not a conventional marriage-first, love-later story. Their mutual crush becomes real.

4. Mainly set in the city, with flashbacks. Daily updates, around 11 p.m.

* * * * * * * *

"Slowly, Life Takes Root"

During her sophomore-year summer break, Shen Ransheng stayed home to be cheap labor for her own mother. She brewed medicine and served tea at the family clinic. As steam curled above the teacups, she indulged in her hobby of reading people's palms. She had never seen lines as faint as his. With a perfectly serious face, she said, "Sir, your palm lines are so faint. I'm afraid you'll have bad luck, with little fate and little fortune."

He looked at her and smiled. "Luck may not be on my side, but you haven't said anything about fate."

She wore a strand of agarwood beads that looked exactly like the one on his wrist, only a little lighter in color.

The city's chief official came over respectfully to greet him. Shen Ransheng looked from the medicine pot to the teacup to him, guilt making her insist that the tea was too hot. It was so hot it made her cheeks and ears turn red.

Later, wearing his bracelet, she lowered her eyes and traced the lines on his palm with her finger. She couldn't make the line that symbolized love any longer or deeper, no matter how she traced it. He kissed the crease between her brows smooth.

Theme: Protect our green mountains, clear waters, and little animals