Stealing Summer

Seven-year age gap / mutual pining comes true / happy ending The summer when Ruan Tingwu was fourteen was a once-in-a-lifetime season. The weather bureau said it would be many years before a summer like that came again. At the school anniversary celebration, there was also a once-in-a-lifetime man standing on the stage. The principal held the microphone, visibly excited. "Liang Yan, it took a lot of effort to get you back here today." Tingwu was bent over her physics notes, studying. When she looked up, she saw the man the principal was praising. She glanced at him just once. From then on, his name, Liang Yan, appeared countless times in the margins of her books and notes. - Unfortunately, Liang Yan was one person onstage and another off it. Onstage, he played the part of an exemplary student to perfection, but behind the scenes he was hedonistic, unruly, and reckless. Tingwu had a crush on him for two years. In her second year of high school, she moved into Liang Yan's house because of her cousin. She did everything she could to hide her sensitive, vulnerable feelings. Liang Yan treated her as a friend's younger sister, keeping his distance while still taking care of everything for her. They lived in the same villa, only a floor apart, yet Tingwu always felt that Liang Yan was a thousand miles away. - But at the motorcycle race that year, Liang Yan won the championship. Tingwu stood beside him with a camera, personally taking a picture of the man who would forever remain so bright and spirited in her life. But at the party that night, a friend asked who the girl always following Liang Yan around was. Tingwu heard Liang Yan's lazy, carefree voice with her own ears: "Who else? A friend's little sister. They asked me to look after her." His rowdy friends thought Tingwu wasn't there, so they couldn't resist asking, "Just a little sister? Liang Yan, you even brought her to the motorcycle race. You really haven't developed any feelings for her?" Standing outside the door, Tingwu had no idea whether she was waiting for a storm or a sky full of hope. Then Liang Yan's even more nonchalant voice came from inside. "If someone leaves their little sister with me, I'll bring her to a motorcycle race too. That's called taking responsibility, " Tingwu turned and left before he could finish. In the sudden downpour, her eyes reddened. For the first time, she left Liang Yan's villa on a whim and moved into the school dormitory. - Later, after Tingwu got into a top university, she ran into Liang Yan again at a party. She kept her sensitive feelings hidden, but she never expected him to stop her in the hallway, mistaking the boy beside her for her boyfriend. Drunk out of his mind, he leaned close and breathed heavily beside her ear. His thin lips seemed to brush her earlobe. He was as reckless as he'd been years ago, but this time he was completely sincere. "I've spoiled you rotten. You can't even pick a boyfriend." The man curved his eyes slightly and gripped her wrist. "Someone like him can be your boyfriend?" Tingwu pressed her lips together, and once again he brought tears to her eyes. The next second, Liang Yan pulled her wrist into his arms and bent close to stare at her, as if trying to pull her into his very being. "If someone like him can be your boyfriend, then take a look at me, Wu Wu. Will you?" He gritted his teeth, his eyes red. "I can be better than him." Only one person had ever called her Wu Wu. From the age of fourteen to twenty, Ruan Tingwu seemed trapped in that summer when she was fourteen, never seeing the light of day, until Liang Yan appeared before her again. It was as if she had finally left that summer behind. 2022.9.25 "A Fish Swims In at Summer's End" Cold, aloof boy vs. gentle, soft girl * Jing Dang was a cold, cocky, unruly golden boy. Yi Shuyao knew it from the first time she saw him. The boy stood with the basketball court's light behind him, his sharp eyes narrowed as he looked down at her. "Got nothing better to do? Who asked you to meddle?" Yi Shuyao had just moved from the countryside to the neon-lit city, and she was nearly scared to tears. But on the day a heavy snowfall blocked the roads and made travel extremely dangerous, Jing Dang willingly carried her on his back all night, soothing her with a cold expression. "Yi Shuyao, I'm here with you. What do you have to be afraid of?" Later, everyone at Minghai High School knew that Jing Dang, the school's big shot, cherished the soft-spoken girl with dimples until she was part of his very soul. * Who would have thought that after the college entrance exams, Jing Dang and Shuyao would become like strangers during their seaside trip? The girls speculated endlessly, but all their guesses pointed to the same answer: "Jing Dang's a player. He probably got tired of Yi Shuyao." "It's obvious. Do we really have to spell it out? What good does it do Yi Shuyao to hang around Jing Dang all day? The young master can dump her whenever he wants." No one knew the truth: Yi Shuyao was the one who let go first. That day, Jing Dang stood in front of her. His prominent Adam's apple bobbed, and his whole presence was aggressive. For the first time in front of her, he bit down on a cigarette, grinning brazenly like a bastard. "Fine. Get lost as far away as you can." Yi Shuyao left with red-rimmed eyes, not knowing that the spirited boy felt like dying that night. * On the day they met again, Yi Shuyao looked across the crowded throng at the man surrounded by admiration. They passed shoulder to shoulder. He didn't look at her again, his eyes filled with nothing but unfamiliarity. Yi Shuyao followed his gaze downward and glanced at his wrist. One look was enough to leave her heart in ashes. When she was seventeen, she fell in love with goldfish and wanted to get a little fish tattooed on her body, but she was afraid it would hurt. To comfort her, Jing Dang got the goldfish tattooed on his wrist instead. Now the goldfish tattoo was gone too. Yi Shuyao's nose stung. She knew he was once again as far out of reach as ever, and that there was no future for them. Later In a dim, dark private room, the man seized the slender wrist of the girl and roughly pinned her against the wall. His eyes were dark and sharp, his voice hoarse. "Yi Shuyao, do you have no heart?" Her back hurt where it was pressed against the wall, but her nose stung even more. Hurt and humiliated, she said, "You got your tattoo removed." Jing Dang curled his lip and yanked off his shirt. Before she could react, he suddenly bit her earlobe. His voice, husky with longing, rang out in the neon-lit night. "Shuyao, my damn heart beats for you." Only then did Yi Shuyao see the lean, muscular lines of his waist leading upward, where several goldfish appeared vividly over his heart, winding and alive, bringing warmth to every summer that came before. * That summer when they were seventeen, both their hearts beat just as fiercely. The fish that swam into Yi Shuyao's life at the end of that summer when she was seventeen only slowly swam into the beat of her heart when she was twenty-five. But thankfully, the summer of her seventeenth year would always burn bright, and that late-arriving fish would swim into every summer that followed. Theme: Study hard.