An Evening Breeze at Seventeen Degrees

[The author's new novel, Broken Redemption, is now open for follows: a gorgeous, cold-hearted, arrogant heroine x a roguish, cunning, aloof male lead. Author's Weibo: Jiang Nanzhuo]

This is a story of secret love coming true and a relationship rekindled. She secretly loved him for five years, and he waited for her just as long.

"If the summer breeze ever turns cool, it must be because it has passed over you."

No one knew that Meng Yu had loved Cheng Wang for five whole years. No one knew she'd rehearsed the words "Hello, Cheng Wang" over and over in her heart.

Her secret love had drifted through the deep sea without stirring a single ripple. Until five years later, when Cheng Wang broke the silence and took her hand.

But their breakup was painful, too.

Cheng Wang had no idea that he was the subject of the thoughts Meng Yu had written down over five years. He mistakenly thought he was just a stand-in for the person she loved. And Meng Yu, convinced that her presence was keeping Cheng Wang from his freedom, believed she had to let him go.

"Cheng Wang, let's break up." Her hand clenched tightly inside her sleeve. She spoke so calmly that Cheng Wang couldn't see the turmoil flooding her heart.

"Fine. Don't regret it." His eyes darkened. He gave a faint, bitter smile and agreed hoarsely without daring to ask who she loved.

Meng Yu watched Cheng Wang walk away. Only after he had vanished from sight did she summon the strength to force a smile. "Cheng Wang, I'll give you back your freedom."

They meet again at a reception five years later.

Meng Yu walks past him arm in arm with a talented young man in a suit, her every smile and gesture more poised and graceful than before.

Cheng Wang admits it: he's gone mad. All the longing he had repressed explodes in an instant. He can't stand to see another man by her side.

He goes to find her, but what does she say?

"Cheng Wang, we parted on good terms. How can you say I abandoned you?"

This time, he is the one who treads carefully.

He has nearly read her secret diary to tatters.

Cheng Wang has been praised for his intelligence since childhood, but he alone knows how foolish he is. Otherwise, how could he have failed to realize that she had loved him for five years?

"That diary is mine. Don't you think you should give it back?" Meng Yu's voice is calm, so calm it makes him panic.

He curls his lip in self-mockery. "Can't you even leave me with this last thing to remember you by?"

-

One night, some time later.

After they lose themselves in passion, he speaks hoarsely by her ear.

"A Yu, Cheng Wang doesn't put freedom above all else. He puts Meng Yu above all else."

Additional information:

The male lead isn't a playboy and has only ever loved the female lead. The female lead isn't a lovesick fool; she's clear-headed and independent. Happy ending, single-couple romance.

Also: Broken Redemption, a gorgeous, cold-hearted, arrogant heroine x a roguishly handsome, cunning, devoted hero. A campus story of salvation and a rekindled romance.

It was a day of steady drizzle.

Lu Jingyao sat in his car and saw a girl standing alone at the bus stop, proud and isolated. Her eyes were clear and sharp, yet held a coldness and sorrow that no girl of seventeen or eighteen should have had.

They met again at school. Lu Jingyao recognized her at once. But she seemed to have left those emotions behind that day. All she gave people now was an air of casual indifference.

On the third day after Ying Sui transferred to the school, someone who couldn't mind their own business spread the rumors about her from her previous school. Lu Jingyao waited to see how his new deskmate would react.

Ying Sui heard the gossip and paid it little mind. She simply snatched the cup from the speaker's hand and threw it into the trash can in front of the whole class.

With a lazy smile and raised brows, she said, "People with filthy mouths shouldn't drink clean water. Water from the sewer suits you better."

The whole class gasped.

Lu Jingyao raised a brow as he looked at her, finding his new deskmate quite interesting. Also, well, she had pretty good aim.

-

Later, Lu Jingyao admitted he had fallen for her. In the back-and-forth of their repeated clashes, he lost his heart to this girl who seemed so cold and heartless.

He tried to quietly conquer her heart. He almost did, just a little more and he would have succeeded.

-

Where did Ying Sui get her name?

Her mother, who despised her, gave it to her. Ying Sui's birth was an accident. She was supposed to have been crushed by forceps.

Her grandmother gave her the nickname Suisui, from the phrase "may everything go smoothly."

But Ying Sui still didn't dare to hope for too much from anything or anyone too wonderful. After all, how often does everything go smoothly? The world is full of disappointments.

Ying Sui would always remember graduation day. The summer breeze was stifling as she toyed with her long hair and spoke to Lu Jingyao in a flat voice. "Lu Jingyao, I was just playing around."

"Why did you take it seriously?"

-

The day they reunited was at the end of summer. Cicadas filled the air with a restless din, and even more restless was Ying Sui's heart.

In the back alley behind a bar, Lu Jingyao grabbed her hand and whispered in her ear with a roguish air, "Suisui, since you love playing around so much, how about playing around with me?"

He hauled her into his bedroom, his fingertips roaming everywhere as if he meant to go all the way, frightening her until she finally told the truth.

In the midst of the confusion, she finally gave in and spoke in a hoarse voice. "I... I've never been with a man."

A companion novel in the Broken Redemption series: Wild Garden, Cen Ye x Yun Zhi (an obsessive, refined special operations team leader x a cool, alluring photographer)

Cen Ye loves only Yun Zhi. He planned it for a long time and finally made Yun Zhi fall in love with him.

Even their breakup was amicable, because neither wanted the other to make concessions for their sake.

Yun Zhi never imagined she would reunite with Cen Ye in the midst of a war. The boy in her memories overlapped with the man in the dark green uniform before her, rescuing her from danger.

He led her out of the raging conflict and saw her onto a plane evacuating overseas Chinese. But neither of them spoke about their past.

Just before leaving, Cen Ye finally tried to explain.

"Yun Zhi, back then..."

Yun Zhi interrupted him. "Captain Cen, maybe you should wait until you get back to tell me. I'll be waiting in Nancheng for an explanation."

Cen Ye smiled carelessly, but didn't answer.

Everyone knew how dangerous his mission was, but neither of them said another word.

They stubbornly gazed at each other,

as if they meant to keep looking until the end of their lives.

-

A bullet grazed Cen Ye's heart.

He was barely holding on. But then he remembered that he still hadn't explained things to Yun Zhi. He still hadn't told her he loved her.

-

Two months later.

Yun Zhi watched the news report announcing the completion of the evacuation again and again.

She could recite it by heart. It had been over for ages. Why hadn't he come?

-

At a temple.

"Who are you praying for?" Her half-brother, Yun Qi, had thought his sister wouldn't believe in things like this.

"A bastard," Xu Zhi replied coldly.

She said that, yet she knelt with such devotion.

As soon as Cen Ye had recovered, his mother brought him to the temple to give thanks and fulfill a vow.

Amid the curling incense smoke, he saw Yun Zhi, the woman who had never left his thoughts.

Beneath a ginkgo tree thousands of years old, their gazes met, but neither moved, just as stubbornly as when they parted.

He was back. Yun Zhi had thought he hadn't returned yet, which was why she had come to pray for him.

He just didn't want to come see her. Just like that year.

-

So she took her brother's hand. "A Qi, let's go."

Yun Qi nodded quietly. Looking at the tall, proud man across from them, his face indifferent, he immediately understood that this was the bastard she had mentioned.

Cen Ye stared at her, feeling pain begin to spread through his chest again. He had recovered, so why did it still hurt?

-

In the courtyard behind the temple, Cen Ye found her. Just as she was about to walk past him, he grabbed her wrist.

"This is a Buddhist holy site. Isn't this inappropriate?" Xu Zhi looked at him coolly.

"Are you dating someone?"

"Captain Cen, you're getting a little too involved."

"Break up with him."

Xu Zhi found it ridiculous and couldn't even be bothered to open her mouth.

"You don't love him."

"And how would you know?"

"Because I know what Yun Zhi looks like when she loves someone."

That year, the love in your eyes as you looked at me was more boundless than the universe.

"People change. I'm not the girl I was at eighteen or nineteen anymore."

"No. My A Zhi will never change."

Theme: You were once my impossible dream, and later you stood by my side.