I Heard You've Been Spreading Rumors That I Love You

Bai Yuanxiao suffered from severe insomnia and had finally decided to quit his job and return to his hometown in the county, where he could live with his grandmother again. He would grow some crops, tend some flowers, and see if he could get used to working at sunrise and resting at sunset.

On moving day, he found an old letter deep inside his bookcase. Duan Fei had given it to him when they graduated from high school.

He remembered Duan Fei saying, "If you're still single when you're thirty, open it then." Back then, Bai Yuanxiao had taken his promise seriously and solemnly agreed not to read it. That had held until this year, when he was twenty-seven...

With a sharp rip, Bai Yuanxiao tore open the envelope.

After ten years, the moment the paper tore, tiny flecks of dust bloomed in the sunlight like fireworks.

The letter read:

Dear deskmate, I love you.

With best wishes,

*

As it happened, Duan Fei taught at a public university in the city near his hometown.

And over winter break, Duan Fei had also returned to the county.

The New Year festivities were in full swing. After a little to drink on New Year's Eve, Bai Yuanxiao had some things he just had to get off his chest. In the end, he decided to pour them out to his work WeChat account, "Planning Department, Bai Yuanxiao."

But he tapped the wrong chat by mistake and sent the messages to his class group, which had been silent for ten years:

"He must have forgotten that letter by now. I was seventeen, he was eighteen. What did we know about love?"

"Should I ask him about it? No, that'd be so awkward."

In the utterly silent group chat of fifty classmates, nobody dared make a move.

Until,

"Duan Fei: I think you should ask him."

Bai Yuanxiao wondered if this alternate account had become sentient, then replied:

"What the hell do you know?"

*

After sobering up and seeing the chat history, Bai Yuanxiao sat on the roof, wondering whether jumping headfirst from the third floor of his grandmother's rural home would actually kill him.

Duan Fei figured he should be getting up around then, so he waited downstairs at his grandmother's house early, looked up at him, and asked, "How about we get married and salvage this situation?"

*

After they got their marriage certificate, this handsome, scholarly university teacher patiently answered every curious friend who asked why he had suddenly married Bai Yuanxiao.

Duan Fei said, "We've been in love for a long time. I love him, and he loves me."

Bai Yuanxiao said, "Professor Duan, you're just making things up, aren't you?"

*

Reading Guide:

1. Same-sex marriage is legal; they marry first and fall in love later.

2. The bottom is a former game planner with severe insomnia that leaves him moody and unpredictable x the top is an exceptionally gentle, refined university teacher.

Synopsis screenshot dated August 10, 2023

Theme: A young man's dream is the truest of all.