New story recommendations:
[Currently serializing] The Wind Keeps Blowing, Wen Jiayin x Qi Xiaoyu: coming-of-age ensemble story, girl-powered heroism. Updating whenever inspiration strikes. Free during serialization.
[Coming soon] Half a Heart, Cheng Youwei x Shi Jiaxu: coming of age / love across borders / urban workplace. (A comfortable genre. Enjoy without worries.) "A heartless city, loving men and women."
One-line blurb: A heartless city, loving men and women.
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Reader warning: Niche story / not a sweet, feel-good romance / BE / an ordinary person's story / no judgments about characters or the consequences of their actions. If you're hung up on moral values, chastity, or purity, or have any other triggers, please! Don't! Read! This! The world is so awful, so awful. Let's not make things hard for one another!!! (I'll delete comments with strong condemnation, hostile attitudes, or comments about personal values and curses. Reasonable criticism will stay. (It's a completely free story. I never delete comments on paid stories.))
"Innocent people can love, and that is their secret." - Hermann Hesse
In 2020, at the height of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, Jiang Peiyu woke to the rich, simple aroma of butter.
Melbourne was under lockdown due to COVID-19. He had plenty of time to waste.
With his eyes closed, he idly imagined the sky outside his window. It had to be bluer than the Windows interface, a blue that could outdo the human imagination.
Two nights earlier, after Lin Youyou watched The Truman Show, she proposed a thought experiment. She felt that what was above their heads might just be a screen.
"If I were Truman, I wouldn't try to find out the truth. I don't understand why people always want to know the truth. If I were Truman, I'd want to stay in that old world, even if it was a lie."
Lin Youyou propped herself up on her slender arms and giggled as she made her point.
He lowered his head and kissed her upturned lips and sorrowful eyes.
Jiang Peiyu opened his eyes. It was an ordinary morning in 2024. The rainy season had just ended in Shenzhen.
A woman's soft, fragmented voice came through the door. It was his wife, Qin Yue, baking in the kitchen with his mother, while his father, who hated him sleeping in, watched the eight o'clock news in the living room.
It was just an ordinary day. A harmless, happy day that belonged to him.
Free to read!!!
Reunion in a foreign country / medium-length story (30+ chapters) / not a sweet, feel-good romance / BE / just an ordinary story, with no judgments about characters or the consequences of their actions. If you care about moral values (including readers who like labeling works by whether the male or female lead suffers), don't follow this story. If you're hung up on chastity, I beg you, please, please don't read it!!!
Posting starts on December 23, with two chapters that day. Five updates a week after that.
Theme: Passing each other by
When I read the last three chapters, I kept crying. At first, I thought it was a vulgar story about a male protagonist abandoning the female protagonist and getting rich and beautiful. But it turned out that I was wrong. I was the most vulgar one. It is rare to see an article written from the perspective of the male protagonist. It feels like Jiang lives in a fictional world. The summer of 2009 was obviously the most innocent year, but everything about his parents seemed so hypocritical. As a child, Jiang could only cater to or suppress himself from bursting the bubble of lies. The appearance of Youyou gave him an unprecedented feeling - a sense of reality. In 2009, Youyou would boldly admit that her mother was a fish seller, and would boldly ask her father not to go to the Luo family's mahjong parlor... The arrival of Youyou pulled Jiang into the most real world, so much so that when I saw them reunited, I would think that Jiang had spent all the luck in the rest of his life. The most uncomfortable thing for me is that everything happened so perfectly. It was Jiang who encountered difficulties in returning to work and just received a breakup text message from Youyou. Jiang happened to meet Jiajia when his father was ill and received a postcard from Jiajia. Jiang happened to be standing in the fish-killing shop of Youyou's mother, and his brother happened to remember his aunt who loved buying gifts for him so much that everyone started to become silent. Yuyou, everyone's first impression of you in your life seems to be familiar. Do people always see the lost person through you in the depths of their memory? Or is it that all this is doomed for your ending, and you will eventually live in everyone's memories. It's the child Luo's mother lost, Mark's wife, Lian Yi's friend in the United States... Yuyou, after you left, everyone seemed to be sick. Maybe it's because the world is sick. Everyone lives in a hypocritical world. Father Jiang and Mother Jiang tried their best to cover up the brokenness of their marriage. Qin's father and Qin's mother tore up the illusion of marriage. Even his parents were for the sake of propriety and respectability, but there was also Mark who ran for love. Who can you say who lives a noble life and a humble life? We all live in this world. Some people jump out of the bubble of hypocrisy, and some people are struggling to death. Yoyo, Jiang forgot to say "Happy New Year" to you in the New Year of 2020. As the New Year of 2026 approaches, I want to say to you, "Yuyou, Happy New Year. I'm sorry that it's too late to meet you. I hope you open your own dessert shop in some parallel world, and have a house of your own with Jiang, facing the sea, and be happy forever!"
The mystery was revealed at the end, as if we were playing a puzzle game. I originally told my friends that this might be a be story with a core plot that is actually very cliché. After all, it seems that it can be summarized as a man getting married but can't forget his ex (.) But after reading it, I felt that maybe it's not a vulgar story after all! Probably because I mourned a very beautiful thing, it was filled with the beauty of sadness. It is this kind of beauty that can make people cry. The memories in the middle are like a nostalgia for the old world before the epidemic. What I miss is a light, healthy and beautiful thing. At that time, we could talk about the future, love, and freedom, but in the post-epidemic era, it seems that everyone is carrying diseases and the death of others, and it is difficult to find lovely things... It seems that love has left with the old world, childhood, or other precious things, but we have not been able to catch it?
It's very well written, the prose is beautiful, and the story comes alive with snippets of authentic detail. Many times when I see some text descriptions, it feels like I have seen the same scenery and life as the author in a corner I have passed by. In my opinion, Yoyo is a very figurative character. Her beauty has the phantom of the old era, and her fragile (not derogatory) side also reflects the fragility that many, many people have and have experienced. Because of this, I feel a little pity, because I think she must be very strong to be able to come to Australia at such a young age and live for so long. It's just that human strength is like a stone thrown into water in the face of nature, fate, and many other things... Maybe there is a voice, maybe it is silent, maybe it has never been worn away, or maybe it can never be seen again. In the article, I can only capture her strength through a few words, but outside of the article, I hope that you, me, and each of us can overcome the disasters in life.
As mentioned earlier, Yoyo is like Wu Juan's eldest daughter. Wu Juan's daughter and Yoyo both died in the water, like a fateful connection.
Thank you to the author for bringing us such a delicate story. His writing skills are very profound and his writing style is great! The shock it brings to me cannot be expressed clearly in a few words, but I want to say that I hope they and we in another parallel world can have another wonderful time.
How great it would be if time could stop at this moment and everyone would be happy
Jiang Peiyu, live well...
Yoyo didn't come back from her final deep dive. Was there something wrong with her equipment, or was her mental state too poor to detect the danger in time? In fact, there is another possibility: Has Yoyo already had the idea of giving up life... When Tong Jiajia met her, she felt that she was already inclined, so she finally said thank you.
I burst into tears, can you just live a simple and happy life together like this?
I love you so much, the author. Your writing is so great that I almost cried my eyes out. Thank you for writing this article ❤️ ❤️ ❤️