The Runaway Hopeless Romantic

My next story, Old Snow Is Hard to Melt: [Limping, melancholic small-town taxi driver]* [Jaded, hard-drinking, obsessive model]. Blurb below! Please add it to your favorites! This story: [Fussy, frail floral designer * Fierce, jealous qipao designer] Cui Qijin is a germaphobic invalid. If she doesn't chew her food slowly, she throws up. If someone coughs near her, she silently moves two meters away. Her bag is neatly packed with alcohol wipes to disinfect her phone anytime, anywhere, and her closet is lined with rows of white shirts. Chi Buyu is a silly little drama queen. She only eats shrimp someone else has peeled for her. She has a soft voice and a sweet tongue, and suffers from skin hunger. When drunk, she buries her face against someone's stomach, the tip of her nose red. Her closet is filled with rows of sexy camisoles and custom qipaos. Rumor has it the two don't get along. Chi Buyu can't stand how Cui Qijin is always scowling. She says Cui Qijin looks so pale she might cough up blood any second, like a gloomy ghost. Cui Qijin can't stand how Chi Buyu is always grinning. She says Chi Buyu has nothing but water in her head, like an idiot's egg. Until one day, after a class reunion, Cui Qijin wakes up from a nightmare in which she's passionately kissing Chi Buyu. She's so startled she can barely catch her breath. Then she notices that the white shirt she took off last night is covered in Chi Buyu's lipstick marks, and Chi Buyu's little camisole is neatly draped over her face. Half-asleep, Chi Buyu mumbles, “You said you'd love me for a hundred centuries. You can't lie to me.” After that, Before ironing her own white shirts each day, Cui Qijin also has to iron Chi Buyu's row of custom qipaos. Chi Buyu slips alcohol wipes and a stack of heart-decorated selfie Polaroids into Cui Qijin's bag, then asks through tearful eyes, “Will you still love me when you come back from your business trip?” At a later class reunion, a drunk Chi Buyu clings to Cui Qijin like a koala all night, mumbling, “You have to love me for a hundred centuries every day!” An old classmate marvels, “Didn't they used to fight the moment they saw each other, flipping tables and everything?” “Who told you that? Didn't you know they danced to ‘Trouble Maker’ together at the freshman welcome party in high school? When Chi Buyu injured herself in their senior year, Cui Qijin was the one who organized her notes for her. During military training, Cui Qijin fainted, and Chi Buyu was the first to rush over and call an ambulance. Every time Cui Qijin gets sick, Chi Buyu notices before she even coughs...” “Even if you didn't know any of that, surely you know they were in the same class in high school, went to the same university, and had studios on the same street after graduation?” The person asking stares in shock. They call that not getting along? At every important moment in life, the other has always been there. A hundred centuries turns out to be so short. It turns out they can love each other for a hundred centuries every day. “A hundred centuries” is from the song “I Will Love You Very Much.” Archived on March 29, 2023. Infringement will be pursued. [Reader's Guide] 1. The leads switch roles. Neither is exclusively the top. 2. Updates every night at ten. My next upcoming story, Red Lips and Wisdom Teeth (unrelated to this story), blurb below: Kuang Lai has been jealous of Xu Wentang since she was little. As Kuang Lai's grandma puts it: Xu Wentang's family is so rich, it's like they've got oil hidden in the 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 the Kuang family has nothing at all. They live in a concrete house whose foundation was only laid a few years ago. Kuang Lai's mother was a madwoman who ran away rather than raise her daughter. Kuang Lai herself is a little crazy, always acting wild and never stopping. But her grandma and Xu Wentang's grandma are good friends. So Kuang Lai has had no choice but to play with Xu Wentang since childhood. - At three, Kuang Lai falls and breaks a bowl while being naughty. Not only does she end up with blood all over her face, she also leaves a scar on six-year-old Xu Wentang's palm. At nine, an adult jokes that if Xu Wentang can't find a husband when she grows up, it'll be Kuang Lai's fault. Kuang Lai indignantly puts her hands on her hips and declares, “She never wanted to get married anyway! She can marry me if she has to!” Beside her, Xu Wentang straightens the white dress Kuang Lai has rolled in the mud. With perfect poise, she plays along: “Wife, your dress needs washing.” At fifteen, Kuang Lai boldly offers to deliver a love letter to the senior her classmate has a crush on. The senior gets so frightened that she asks her best friend for help. Her best friend Xu Wentang tosses the letter in the trash, taps Kuang Lai on the head without mercy, and says, “Kuang Lai, no dating before you're an adult.” At eighteen, Kuang Lai is still jealous of Xu Wentang. Because twenty-one-year-old Xu Wentang is dressed to the nines, turning everyone's head, and so beautiful she's beyond compare. At twenty-eight, on the first day after her dream falls apart and she slinks back to her hometown, Kuang Lai runs into Xu Wentang. Seeing her old nemesis, Kuang Lai turns and runs. But before long, Xu Wentang comes to stop her at home. The woman who usually acts so gentle around the elders is furious enough to grit her teeth. “Who was it that pinned me inside a closet and kissed me in secret on the night I came of age?” The woman leans closer, tugging at Kuang Lai's reddened earlobe. “Then you ran off right after kissing me, and stayed gone for ten years.” “Kuang Lai, what do you want?” - Kuang Lai has always been jealous of Xu Wentang. Because twenty-one-year-old Xu Wentang was rich. She had everything eighteen-year-old Kuang Lai couldn't have, including Kuang Lai's love. Theme: Love helps people grow and become better versions of themselves.