Rekindled love|Reunion after a long separation|A modern setting interspersed with a few school-day memories
★A scheming, sharp-witted perfumer × an aloof, untouchable horticulturist
Lin Huaichen, the school heartthrob at Ningyuan High School, was proud and cool, with an ethereal air. Everyone agreed he was untouchable. The girls admired him from afar, but none dared reach for him.
Only Xia Suiqiong took action, daring to ask him out for milk tea on the last day of the college entrance exam.
In a little shop filled with summer heat, she squeezed out a little extra gardenia-scented hand cream and deliberately brushed it over the back of his hand. Softly, she explained the origin of her childhood nickname, Tuantuan: "Suiqiong means snow. The clumps of snow on the branches in summer are gardenias."
Xia Suiqiong wasn't sure if Lin Huaichen had really remembered the scent of the hand cream, and her along with it.
All she knew was that she had long been captivated by the cool scent of bamboo leaves clinging to Lin Huaichen. Even after she took the initiative to break up with him, whenever she caught that scent somewhere else, she would find herself missing him again.
A habit became an obsession, and it lasted for years.
The day Lin Huaichen heard about Xia Suiqiong's obsession from someone else, he only sneered. "Xia Suiqiong, if you miss me, beg me to come back. There's no need to go around hinting at it from a distance."
A month later, he changed his tune, sounding almost as if he were making a suggestion. "Tuantuan, if you haven't found anyone more suitable, maybe we could get back together."
One day, Xia Suiqiong visited Lin Huaichen's home and saw the gardenia trees he had planted by hand, one by one, filling the entire back garden with blooms.
Though the world plants pear trees, I choose to plant gardenias., Lin Huaichen
A scent you've encountered before can bring back the memory associated with it, more vividly than other kinds of memory triggers., The Proust effect
Notes:
1. The poem is quoted from Mei Yaochen's Song dynasty poem, "Planting Two Clumps of Gardenias, Eleven Plants in All, Beside the Pine."
2. The male and female leads do not engage in any intimate behavior during high school.
3. The leads break up because of a misunderstanding, but there is no betrayal.
Theme: Those who love each other will find their way to one another.
