Name: The Message in a Bottle and the Thermos
Author: Lan Kou

Synopsis

Top-tier star voice actor * gentle half-Chinese author

Rekindled romance | Mutual healing | Warm and uplifting

*

At her university's opening ceremony, Lan Meixi gave a speech as the freshman representative, while her "secret" boyfriend, Gu Zhize, appeared in a video as one of the school's outstanding alumni.

Once the ceremony began, Lan Meixi kept rehearsing her speech in her head. When she heard the closing line from Gu Zhize's rehearsal, she straightened her clothes and looked up, ready to take the stage.

But Gu Zhize's video was different from the rehearsal. He had added a few words.

He said:

"Finally, my girlfriend was also admitted to C University this year. She'll be speaking on behalf of the freshmen..."

*

There's a top-tier star in the voice acting world, a man with a striking face and an even more striking voice, known to everyone as God Gu.

In his eight years in the industry, God Gu has never had a personal Weibo account and rarely attends in-person events.

But whenever he appears in public, he carries a pale pink thermos printed with an elegant, sweeping "Zhi."

Ever since he first became famous, God Gu has said he's looking for someone. Everyone knows he means the owner of the thermos, but no one has ever brought it up.

Until one in-person event, when he volunteered: "The owner of the thermos is here today..."

-

Later, everyone learned why Lan Meixi's pen name was "Lan Zhilu," and found out about the fairytale romance between her and Gu Zhize, which had wound its way through eleven years.

But no one knows why Gu Zhize's stage name is "Gu Jianzhi,"

just as no one knows that seven years passed between his two public announcements...

#Love rises in the east and sets in the west, romance eternal

(From The Moon and Sixpence)

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First love | Sweet romance | Eight-year age gap

★ My completed novel, My Su Li Huan, is open for readers! ★

Past and present lives | Intense push and pull | A sense of destiny

Vampire hiding in plain sight * calm, perceptive, doting veterinarian

"Dr. Shu, I remember your soul..."

★ My completed novel, The Substitute in the Wrong Place, is open for readers! ★

Mischievous, high-maintenance artist * aggrieved, scheming, black-bellied playboy

Reunion after years apart | Intense push and pull | One flirts, the other takes the bait

"It means, if you put the bait out a little farther, I'll take it..."

#A deliberate collision with someone who'd planned it all along

★ I may be the prey, but I'm also the hunter. -- Mu Ming

★ I thought I was the hunter, so how did I become the prey? -- Si Yuluo

★ My upcoming novel, Soft Scales, is waiting for you to adopt me! ★

-Strangers in public, all tension in private-

*

Jiang Yunong spent the whole summer working, but still couldn't earn enough for rent. So before the school term began, she took a job as a receptionist at a small hotel in an alley near her new school.

Her first guest was a seventeen-year-old high school student.

The boy wore a white T-shirt and black pants, with short hair. He looked at her with a crooked smile, a pointed canine showing, and his head tilted to one side. Clean-cut, yet a little rough around the edges.

Jiang Yunong showed little expression, let alone warmth. She gave him a cool glance, then took his ID to register him.

Rich, handsome young masters really were all the same. At his age, he was already renting a room, and he'd booked one for the whole semester.

That was what Jiang Yunong thought.

*

Chen Che had very particular standards when it came to sleep. Even when the lab's midday break was only half an hour, he'd rent a room outside school to get some rest.

He'd been staying at this hotel since his freshman year. Now, in his sophomore year, he found that the receptionist had changed. The new girl was cold and expressionless, but efficient.

So fair she seemed to glow, with delicate, beautiful features.

The way she looked at him was like a giant python flicking its tongue.

He saw her again at the start of term.

The class monitor said a transfer student was even prettier than a celebrity, so beautiful people didn't dare look at her for long. Chen Che was still asleep with his head on his desk, completely uninterested, until the girl walked into the room and opened her mouth.

Jiang Yunong.

So that was her name.

But...

That bright, open smile and warm, lively manner made her seem like a completely different person from the girl at the hotel...

Well, well. So you have two sides to you?

*

Years later, the two unexpectedly met again at a dinner party. A friend introduced them, and they exchanged polite greetings.

A colleague nudged Jiang Yunong and asked if she knew him.

Looking at Chen Si, Jiang Yunong almost blurted out, "We went to high school together."

At one point, Jiang Yunong went to the restroom. After washing her hands, she looked up and was startled by the man standing against the wall in the mirror.

Chen Che stared at Jiang Yunong in the mirror and stepped closer, stopping just a centimeter behind her.

"What are we to each other?"

He was more than half a head taller than Jiang Yunong and stood much too close. His chest seemed to brush against her back.

They stared at each other in the mirror for a long time, but Jiang Yunong refused to answer.

Chen Che smiled. "Jiang Yunong, classmates don't live together."

He bent down and leaned closer.

"And they don't sleep together..."

★ A decisive orphan, warm and radiant in public, cool and aloof in private

★ A willful young master who seems arrogant and unrestrained, but is actually devoted and pure-hearted

#Both know exactly what they're doing as they fall

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Two compelling people fall into a compelling romance