Asking for a Gift

[Thanks for all the follows and subscriptions! Please support the official version. My upcoming age-gap romance, bittersweet sister-and-younger-man story Full Moon in the Night Sky, is in the works. Please add it to your collection!]

1

On the eve of her study-abroad trip, Xie Yinqiu's friends egged her on to go to a bar, saying it would be a farewell party for her.

Drunk out of her mind, she staggered along and accidentally bumped into someone, falling to the ground. Just as she was about to complain...

A voice above her asked, "Are you okay?"

With nothing but alcohol in her head, Xie Yinqiu instinctively answered, "Not okay."

The man said nothing more. He raised an eyebrow, chuckled softly, and scooped her up from the ground.

That night, Zhou Siran pinned her beneath him and whispered in her ear in a voice full of temptation, "Do you want me?"

Fueled by alcohol, Xie Yinqiu answered without hesitation, "Yes!"

The next morning, when she came to her senses, Xie Yinqiu guiltily packed her things and ran off, boarding her flight abroad.

2

Zhou Siran had come home for a brief visit. He stared in astonishment at the woman with long, black curls standing at the door. She was the woman he had been searching for, day and night, for half a month.

He froze, murmuring, "I blessed a day I found you."

-

Xie Yinqiu finally learned that Zhou Siran was the man from that night. She had no idea how to face the situation now, and because of his work, they were soon forced apart.

When she saw him again, Xie Yinqiu, a psychology major, never expected to experience the textbook "bridge effect" herself. Her feelings overcame her reason, and she fell hopelessly in love with him.

3

It was the same exchange as before, only this time they had switched roles.

Xie Yinqiu smiled mischievously and held a hand against Zhou Siran's chest as she asked, "Do you want me?"

With deep affection in his eyes, Zhou Siran gazed straight at her and replied, "Yes."

-

Some things in this world are just that coincidental: they were born on the same day, and that day happened to be Christmas.

Zhou Siran: "You are my Christmas and birthday gift."

Xie Yinqiu: "Am I?"

Xie Yinqiu: "You too."

[Reading Guide]

1. A bright, lively young woman studying abroad and a gentleman with the contrasting charm of a Chinese-Canadian mixed-race man

2. Both are each other's first love; happy ending

3. Romance is the focus, with little of the study-abroad portion

4. A short, sweet slice-of-life story

My upcoming novel Full Moon in the Night Sky is in the works. Please add it to your collection!

A gentle, composed, divorced violinist with a child x a youthful genius in artificial intelligence, an intellectual lover and an irresistible dad

*Age-gap romance / flirty push and pull / two highly intelligent leads / size difference

Shu Qingyue has a fastidious sense of emotional purity and longs for the most sincere kind of love. She cannot accept even the slightest betrayal, or the thought that she might not be the only one in her partner's heart. So she divorced her first love, the man she had loved deeply and dated for many years.

So what if her marriage failed? Shu Qingyue still had plenty of suitors. Her friends were also eager to set her up with men. When they repeatedly pressed her about what kind of man she wanted, she only said, "You know the answer. No one younger than me, not even by a year."

She wouldn't date a younger man. She was afraid he'd be immature, that he'd be after her money, or that he'd expect her to cater to his emotions...

Shu Qingyue was a woman of principle. Even though that man was mature, emotionally steady, and very well-off, and she was indeed attracted to him, once she learned he was seven years younger, she couldn't help seeing him as a little brother.

-

Pei Ji was a genius. He started college at fifteen and was now a third-year doctoral student at twenty-one. Add his exceptional looks and wealthy family, and everyone called him a once-in-a-generation talent, a born leader with a limitless future. Someone like him ought to be confident and free of worries.

But there was one thing Pei Ji was powerless to change, an objective fact: his age. For the first time, he hated being so young.

On Pei Ji's twenty-second birthday, a junior asked what he had wished for: a postdoctoral position at MIT, a successful startup that would make him a leading name in artificial intelligence in China and around the world, or more papers accepted at NeurIPS?

The birthday boy, expressionless and looking half-dead inside: I wish I could somehow grow seven or eight years older.

And so word spread through his academic circle that his doctoral studies had driven him crazy. He wanted to transmigrate seven or eight years into the future so he could finish his postdoc, launch a successful startup, and make it onto the Forbes rich list.

The rumor started in his academic circle, and it was his academic circle that changed it. Before long, people were saying that twenty-two-year-old Pei Ji had a three-year-old daughter, and that the child's mother had dumped him! He was a single dad! So he must have had her when he was... how old? OMG! Everyone felt sorry for him, but also thought this was beyond the bounds of what they could believe. They found it easier to accept that Pei Ji had gone crazy.

When Pei Ji heard the rumor, he could only laugh helplessly. Then he played up the image his fellow students had given him and pretended to be pitiful. "They say you're coldhearted and faithless, that you seduced me and then abandoned me and our daughter."

Shu Qingyue gave him a faintly amused look. "I'd never abandon a child, but it's true I dumped my husband." She really had kicked her ex-husband to the curb.

Now Pei Ji truly felt sorry for himself. He lowered his head and pressed himself against her, whining, "You know who I mean."

Shu Qingyue liked teasing him, but always had to comfort him right afterward. "All right, all right. What do I have to do to prove I'm innocent and put these rumors to rest?"

Pei Ji curled his lips into a smile, put an arm around her waist, and whispered in her ear, "Big sister, be with me."

[Reading Guide]

1. Seven-year age gap. The heroine has no prior sexual experience, while the hero does. The heroine has an adorable two-year-old daughter with her ex-husband, and she has custody.

2. The leads will not have any more children after marriage. Their daughter will be their only child, and the hero will raise her as his own.

3. They will be apart for a few years later on. The heroine will be the one to end things, but it has a happy ending!

4. A slow-paced, everyday romance

Theme: You are my gift