--
With a bruised and swollen face, Gu Xianyu clutched half a pack of crumpled cigarettes he'd snatched from his stepfather. He squatted outside a billiards hall in town all night before finally spotting a car whose make he couldn't recognize. He stared for a long time at the hand sticking out of the car window to flick away its cigarette ash, then asked, "Sir, want to buy some cigarettes?"
Half the man's face was hidden in the darkness. The light only reached the lower half.
During the long wait for an answer, Gu Xianyu had already given up. He'd even decided which city in the south to go to, when the man finally asked, "How much?"
Gu Xianyu looked at the watch on his wrist and nervously named a price.
"For cigarettes in this condition, at that price?"
"W-We can talk about it," he replied awkwardly.
That night, Gu Xianyu lost the money he'd saved for college, went wild at home, and was beaten within an inch of his life.
Then he put himself through hell to earn that money back.
But that summer, the acceptance letter he'd been sure would come never arrived.
It took him half his life to understand that, that night, he'd been like a fish swimming into a fishbowl, never to return to the rivers, lakes, or seas.
--
Wen Zhifei asked him, "If you can't go to school, what will you do?"
"Go south to find work. I've got a family to support."
Later, when he really couldn't go to school, Wen Zhifei gave him two choices.
"End things, and go south."
"Stay with me, and come to Yanjing."
Gu Xianyu had always been grateful to him.
But people don't, and shouldn't, live as if they're forever the same age.
A possessive, cold-hearted, obsessive top with a domineering streak, and a kind, resilient, ordinary bottom whose wild spirit remains
2025-11
Theme: Unbreakable in the face of setbacks, persevering to the end
