The Court and the Countryside

[Blurb]

Song Zhi Chao × Cheng Ye

**Ten-year age gap

Across from Jiangcheng No. 1 High School stood a large auto repair shop. Every evening, the shop closed right on time when the school bell rang.

The first time Song Zhi Chao ran into Cheng Ye on her way home, she instinctively took him for a bad guy.

Cheng Ye was handsome, sure, but in a rather disreputable way.

With his sun-browned skin, rough, sexy voice, muscular arms half exposed, and the occasional string of curses slipping from his lips, Song Zhi Chao could rack her brain all day and still never connect Cheng Ye with the words "good person."

But gradually, Song Zhi Chao realized that they were simply neighbors living in the same apartment building in the same residential complex.

It took Song Zhi Chao only a few days to go from two people walking one after the other on the way home to companions walking side by side.

But going from someone at her side to someone in her bed took half her life.

That summer, when she was sixteen, disaster struck without warning.

Song Zhi Chao's mother fell to her death, and her father was sent to prison.

Her mother's body crashed onto the car Cheng Ye had parked downstairs, leaving both her body and the car shattered.

Later, Song Zhi Chao held out the savings she'd secretly built up without her parents knowing and said to Cheng Ye, "I'll pay you back for your car."

Cheng Ye shook his head and refused to take the money. Then he asked her, "Do you know how much my car costs?"

"Is it not enough? If it isn't, I can make it up to you by giving you myself."

But Cheng Ye still wore his usual composed expression as he told her, "Little girl, study hard, so men won't trick you in the future."

Men wouldn't trick Song Zhi Chao, but all Cheng Ye had to do was crook a finger, and she'd willingly take the bait.

2024.02.23

Theme: Navigating love in a muddy swamp