An Incomplete Summer

[A brash, cocky, straightforward love interest x an innocent, beautiful, gentle protagonist]

That summer after their middle school entrance exams, the cicadas were loud as Song Qinghua declared:

"Chilled watermelon, white-sugar ice pops, a little fan, and a cool mat. Without all four, it isn't a complete summer."

Xu Zhouyao stole the sweetest piece from the center of his watermelon, took most of his white-sugar ice pop, blew the breeze from his fan, and lay on his cool mat. Shameless as ever, he said:

"A summer without Song Qinghua isn't complete either."

-

To Song Qinghua, Xu Zhouyao was practically heaven's favorite: excellent grades, excellent looks, and a personality... Well, he was a little mischievous, but that didn't stop him from having countless admirers. Parents called him the kind of kid everyone else's child should be, and teachers groomed him as a top candidate for Peking and Tsinghua Universities.

But on the day the middle school entrance exam results came out, Xu Zhouyao stood beneath Song Qinghua's window with a score more than seventy points lower than his practice exams and said, "Let's go to No. 3 High School together!"

His excuse was that he'd accidentally filled in the wrong answers on the English multiple-choice section.

Still, that was how Song Qinghua got two pretty good years of high school.

They were two years Song Qinghua would spend the rest of his life wanting to forget and wanting to remember.

-

"My parents are always pointing at PhDs and postdocs on TV and telling me to learn from them. But my brain's just not cut out for it. If you hadn't dragged me into studying all night before the entrance exams, I wouldn't even have gotten into a vocational school. Zhouyao, your grades are great, so I'm leaving this important task to you!"

Later, Xu Zhouyao was accepted into a doctoral program, but it was as if he had drowned in the water.

Xu Zhouyao drowned in the flood formed by the torrential rain that summer, and Song Qinghua never managed to cross the wall built in his heart from guilt and remorse.

*This is BE! The protagonist dies!!!

*Things are pretty sweet until they part! (Trust me.)

*Content warning: The protagonist has depression; his father is an alcoholic who commits domestic violence; his mother dies by suicide!!!

Theme: Even when life is unrecognizable, please keep living for yourself.