[Scheming, straightforward hopeless romantic vs. tsundere, carefree little handful]
Unrequited love becomes mutual, healing each other | Childhood friends | 1v1 sweet romance
Nineteen-year-old Wen Bai loves twenty-one-year-old Ling Yiyan.
Ling Yiyan heard it from Wen Bai herself, but he didn't believe her.
Back then, Wen Bai even wrote him a wildly over-the-top love letter and tossed it onto his desk.
He laughed it off as a childish prank and kept it, but he never stopped holding on to it.
After all, since they were little, the little princess of the Wen family had made a habit of turning up at his door whenever she had nothing to do
only to ask where Ling Yiyan's twin brother Ling Li was. That brother was neither gentlemanly nor remotely mannered.
Busy earning money wherever he could to support his family, Ling Yiyan spent a long time mistakenly believing, with an adult's perspective and a boy's way of thinking, that she liked Ling Li.
Later, he held her hand as they attended the Wen family's somber funeral.
Then, on a rainy night when no one was looking back, he held up an umbrella and brought the girl, soaked through, home with him.
He said, "Don't be afraid. From now on, big brother will take care of you."
*
When she was nineteen, he ruined the confession plan she'd made for someone whose identity he didn't know.
Wen Bai promptly tossed him a relationship contract, which read: Wen Bai isn't allowed to date, and neither is Ling Yiyan.
He signed it extraordinarily quickly, but privately believed her dependence on him had simply been mistaken for love.
Many years later, on Wen Bai's birthday, Ling Yiyan, now a top model, suppresses his jealousy and resentment as he waits for her outside the haute couture banquet venue, ready to drive her to meet Ling Li.
But nineteen-year-old Wen Bai calls him "Big Brother" and rises onto her tiptoes.
In full view of everyone, she hooks a finger in his tie, forcing Ling Yiyan to brace himself against the wall behind her to keep his balance, and to hold on to the last of his self-control.
Wen Bai slips an arm around the back of his neck and leans in to breathe against his ear as if kissing him, only to pull away at once.
"Well, well, big brother. You know how to pin me against the wall now?"
Ling Yiyan's Adam's apple bobs. After a long pause, he says, "To be honest, I've been waiting a long time."
-I walk through the dark, a footless bird for all my life, yet roses and passionate kisses save me and sentence me to a lifetime of love.
-Forbidden love is a sin, and its name is romance.
[Reader's Guide]
A companion to Birds Flying Toward the Gods, set in the same world.
Inspired by: "I am of low birth, madam, but I am not base.", The Red and the Black
Theme: A road does not lose its beauty just because it is lined with thorns.
