Aftereffects

Crazy Love is now underway! Next up for pre-order: Old Snow Is Hard to Melt [Lame, Melancholy Taxi Driver * Alcohol-Obsessed, Reclusive Model] This story features [Pure-Hearted, Socially Anxious Yogurt Deliverywoman * Alluring Musical Theater Actress] Sang Sinan is a socially anxious woman who fears physical contact and phone conversations. She goes out at three thirty in the morning to deliver yogurt, earning 1.1 yuan for each bottle. You Zhiyu is the most celebrated musical theater actress in a top troupe. After a touring production, she opened a cafe by the sea, but business has been getting worse by the day. In a small seaside town at three thirty in the morning, the socially anxious Sang Sinan meets the flirtatious, drunken You Zhiyu. At night, You Zhiyu stands in a white dress, holding a pot of unopened bellflowers. She doesn't know whether she's talking to Sang Sinan or the ghosts in the sea. "Why won't the flowers bloom? Do they not get fed? How pitiful." Sang Sinan backs away in fright, but then figures she should at least get the drunk woman home. To avoid physical contact, she holds one end of a plastic bag and has You Zhiyu grip the other to keep her balance as they walk. But You Zhiyu can't bear to put down the pot of bellflowers she thinks of as her "child." She gently pinches the plastic bag around Sang Sinan's hand and demands, "We haven't even been married three years, and you're already fed up with me and our child?" * You Zhiyu upends Sang Sinan's quiet retirement in the small town. When she hears she's got a new yogurt customer, she goes over to install a milk box, only to find You Zhiyu swaying around in a slip dress. All Sang Sinan can do is face the empty white wall, blushing and keeping her eyes straight ahead. There are too many such mishaps. Even the phone she finds by the roadside belongs to someone surnamed You. She returns it, struggling to maintain a normal social distance. Until one day, she has half a glass of wine. You Zhiyu leans toward her, pinches her hot, flushed ear, and speaks as if coaxing her, "Sang Sinan, why don't you remember me?" Sang Sinan pushes her away. How could she not remember You Zhiyu? When they were young, they crossed paths only twice. Once, when a young thug slashed Sang Sinan's neck, You Zhiyu pressed a hand to the bleeding wound. The other time, when Sang Sinan was chased by her drunken uncle, You Zhiyu stood in front of her. But back then, Sang Sinan smoked, drank, and fought. She was bitter and sharp, and had made a complete mess of herself. Of course she remembered You Zhiyu. She just didn't want to. * Later, Sang Sinan overcomes her social anxiety and spends every day at the cafe. One day, she smiles at a female customer. That night, You Zhiyu straddles her, swaying like a vine as she grips Sang Sinan's fragile pulse. "You should only smile at me." [Reader's Guide] 1. The two heroines are four years apart in age. Neither is perfect. Next up for pre-order: Red Lips and Wisdom Teeth (not this story). Here's the blurb: Kuang Lai has been jealous of Xu Wentang since childhood. As Kuang Lai's grandma put it, "Xu Wentang's family is so rich, you'd think they had oil buried in their backyard. They live in a manor behind iron gates, Xu Wentang's mom looks like a movie star, and Xu Wentang herself looks like one too." But Kuang Lai's family had nothing. They lived in a cement house built just a few years ago. Kuang Lai's mother was a lunatic who abandoned her daughter and ran off, and Kuang Lai herself was a little lunatic, acting crazy all day long. But her grandma was friends with Xu Wentang's grandma. So Kuang Lai had no choice but to play with Xu Wentang from a young age. - At three, Kuang Lai was so naughty she dropped a bowl, not only cutting her own face to ribbons but leaving a scar in six-year-old Xu Wentang's palm. At nine, the adults joked that if Xu Wentang couldn't find a husband when she grew up, it would be Kuang Lai's fault. Kuang Lai objected, hands on her hips. "She doesn't want to get married anyway! She can just marry me!" Xu Wentang, standing nearby, straightened Kuang Lai's white dress, which she'd rolled around in until it was covered in mud, and played along with perfect composure. "Wifey, your dress needs washing." At fifteen, Kuang Lai bravely stepped in to deliver a love letter to the older student her classmate had a crush on. The crush was so frightened that she asked her best friend for help. Her best friend, Xu Wentang, threw the letter in the trash, tapped Kuang Lai on the head without a hint of politeness, and said, "Kuang Lai, no dating before you're an adult." At eighteen, Kuang Lai was still jealous of Xu Wentang. Because twenty-one-year-old Xu Wentang was glamorous and irresistible, and so beautiful it was hard to look away. At twenty-eight, on the first day after her dreams fell apart and she returned to her hometown in disgrace, Kuang Lai ran into Xu Wentang. Seeing her old nemesis, Kuang Lai took off running. Before long, Xu Wentang showed up at her house to stop her. The woman who usually acted so meek in front of their elders was furious enough to grit her teeth. "Who was it that pinned me inside a closet and kissed me on the night I came of age?" The woman's breath drew close as she tugged Kuang Lai's flushed ear. "And then you ran away after kissing me. You stayed away for ten years." "Kuang Lai, what exactly were you thinking?" - Kuang Lai had always been jealous of Xu Wentang. Because twenty-one-year-old Xu Wentang was rich, and had everything eighteen-year-old Kuang Lai couldn't have, including Kuang Lai's love. Theme: Heal yourself