Burning Ice

[My next novel is Also Playing Along Today. Please add it to your collection!]

Rekindled love | Mutual healing | Primarily urban, with flashbacks to school days

At eighteen, Cheng Sixuan was a famous figure at school, proud and aloof, cold and taciturn. He gave every admirer the same unchanging, icy expression.

Everyone thought he was a model student who cared about nothing but his studies.

But no one knew that at the end of that winter, in an empty, silent classroom after school, Cheng Sixuan had obediently bowed his head in the darkness and let the girl opposite him fasten a necklace with a lock pendant around his neck.

Snow fell thickly outside the window.

Inside, the boy brushed his warm fingertips along Jiang Han's lips, boundless tenderness rippling through his cool, refined features. "The key is yours."

Then he leaned down and murmured, "Only you can unlock it."

But this brazen devotion did not survive the following winter.

-

Four years after they cut off all contact, they ran into each other in Linan under different circumstances.

It was Valentine's Day. Jiang Han ran through the rain from the flower shop to a hotel to deliver a bouquet of roses a customer had ordered long in advance.

She never expected to push open the door in disheveled clothes, appearing before Cheng Sixuan in the most wretched state of her life.

After all those years apart, he was still the favored son of heaven he'd been back then.

Meanwhile, the radiance she once had had been worn away by reality, and she had faded into the crowd.

-

From the day she asked to break up, Jiang Han never thought they would have a future.

On a damp spring night, they met again for reasons she could no longer remember. As expected, Cheng Sixuan returned the matching chains, his words full of amused scorn at her naivete. "How could something like this ever keep someone from leaving?"

Jiang Han said nothing, her heart aching with bitterness as scorching tears quietly stung the corners of her eyes.

Unexpectedly, the next moment, a familiar scent filled her nose, and she found herself trapped in the warm embrace she had been without for years.

When she looked up, his eyes were clear of all cold mist, full of unspoken love. "Unless I choose to stay."

"Everyone says Cheng Sixuan is an ice block that can't be warmed. Only Jiang Han has seen him burn for her with her own eyes."

"Did you know? Love feels more like a shackle than anything else."

Untouchable literary star and rising author x Radiant, fragile flower-shop girl

Content notes: One man, one woman, both virgins and each other's first love | Happy ending

-[My next novel is Also Playing Along Today. Please add it to your collection!]-

Childhood friends | College campus | Cohabitation | Lighthearted daily life

The battle between childhood friends lasts forever. That one sentence sums up the eighteen-year relationship between Cen Wu and Fu Zhilin.

They were always at odds, neither able to stand the other.

Until, on the eve of starting college, an out-of-nowhere car accident left Cen Wu's body in disarray and gave her an alternate personality with the opposite temperament: a soft, sweet girl.

Cen Wu was frustrated by it, because her second personality was active at night and kept doing things she didn't want to do without her knowledge.

Like acting cute, asking for hugs, and bursting into tears over the slightest little grievance.

Fu Zhilin was frustrated too.

Because he was the hapless guy assigned to look after Cen Wu, and the one who had to deal with her cuteness, her demands for hugs, and her tears.

-

To keep her from frightening her roommates when she had an episode, Fu Zhilin dutifully accepted the task from her parents and rented an apartment off campus to share with her.

One night, a few months into living together, Cen Wu got up to use the bathroom and unexpectedly saw Fu Zhilin standing in front of the mirror, trying to scrub a fresh hickey off his neck.

She watched coldly from the doorway for a while before finally asking the question on her mind. "What girl has such terrible taste that she'd leave a mark like that on you?"

Fu Zhilin raised an eyebrow, pointing to the evidence with an inscrutable look in his eyes. "Half an hour ago."

"When your second personality was still here."

"?"

-

Cen Wu had a secret she'd take to the grave.

After her dissociative identity disorder was cured, she had actually impersonated her 2.0 self several more times and thrown herself at Fu Zhilin.

She kept this secret until after Fu Zhilin asked her out.

One day, she accidentally came across an entry in the notes on his phone, a list specifically for recording her episodes:

September 11: Came knocking in the middle of the night, acting cute and asking me to play games with her.

September 25: Ate the last strawberry cake and cried miserably. It took hours to comfort her.

November 23.

Her 2.0 impression wasn't convincing at all.

But she was kind of cute.

Cen Wu's breath caught. Almost at the same time, a pair of arms wrapped around her from behind, bracing against the edge of the desk in front of her.

The boy rested his chin on the crown of her head. His slightly lowered voice carried a laugh, lingering by her ear. "It can't have been easy pretending for so long. So, Jinjin, remember to be a little nicer to me from now on, okay?"

#Playing along today because I want to find out what other adorable sides of you I don't know yet.#

Stubborn, sharp-tongued little firecracker / Soft, helpless sweetheart x Her dog-like childhood friend

Content notes:

1. The female lead genuinely has two personalities early on. They switch, and have no memories of each other. Her condition improves later. This is for the plot, and should not be taken as a true-to-life portrayal of dissociative identity disorder.

2. Both leads are virgins, happy ending.

Theme: Courage comes from believing in your own worth