Zhong Yiyu

[Complete] Collecting favorites for my next novel, After All These Years

[Older Powerful Man x Sweet, Gentle Girl] Fake Uncle and Niece (Very Fake)

Yun Ci first met Jiang Yudu at the Jiang family’s old mansion.

It was drizzling that day.

The man wore a smoke-gray shirt, with a suit jacket draped over his arm.

Amid the old mansion’s walnut furniture and antique elegance, his refined air and easy bearing made Yun Ci think of a sturdy pine atop a lofty peak in a landscape painting.

“Yun Ci, this is my uncle,” Jiang Baiyang told her. “From now on, you can call him that too.”

Yun Ci looked into his cool, dark eyes.

As their gazes met, her heart seemed to beat a little faster, as if some tender feeling had just taken root.

-

The first time she met him, she used a form of address to put distance between them.

The barrier had gone up so naturally that Yun Ci only regretted it later, when she finally understood what it meant.

Eventually, she summoned all her courage and broke through it.

“Jiang Yudu.” She called him by his name directly for the first time, after kissing him through her tears.

“I like you. I don’t want to call you Uncle.”

The answer she received was an ocean that dragged her under.

Fate was beyond her control. Her mother took her abroad.

-

In the first year after returning to the country, Jiang Yudu met a young woman at his older brother’s home.

She got along well with his nephew, so she called him Uncle too.

He had never thought there was anything wrong with that, until they met again four years later. Her beautiful smile was as light as a veil, and the springwater in her eyes was gone. She merely greeted him politely as Uncle.

A torrential downpour happened to hit that day, and she had no umbrella.

His nephew, Jiang Baiyang, drove her home.

Her figure gradually disappeared into the curtain of rain. For the first time, Jiang Yudu found that form of address unbearably grating.

Later, they ran into each other at a karaoke lounge. During a game of Truth or Dare, Yun Ci was asked how she had had her first kiss.

She smiled casually. “I confessed and kissed him first, then got rejected.”

She sounded as if she were telling someone else’s story.

On the drive home, Jiang Yudu was silent. In the end, he still brought up the subject from the karaoke lounge.

“It’s all in the past. I was too young back then and didn’t think things through,” Yun Ci said, gazing out the car window. He couldn’t see her expression. “Now that I think about it, it’s pretty embarrassing. Uncle, don’t hold it against me. Just forget it.”

He couldn’t forget.

The stars he had once lost, he would gather back one by one.

A Little Extra

“Why are you called Yun Ci?” Jiang Yudu asked.

“My mother really liked porcelain, so she made quite a few pieces at home.” Yun Ci lowered her head, looking a little dejected as she explained. “Do you think the name sounds kind of old-fashioned? When people hear ‘porcelain,’ they think of molding clay...”

“How could it?” Jiang Yudu smiled, his voice low and pleasant. “Porcelain is fragile and needs to be carefully protected. It’s a name to be treasured in the palm of your hand.”

-

Inspired by:

“The sky-blue color waits for the misty rain, and I am waiting for you.” Lyrics by Fang Wenshan, from Jay Chou’s “Blue and White Porcelain”

-

P.S.:

1. The leads have an eight-year age gap, and both are sexually inexperienced.

2. The heroine is already an adult when she comes to the capital to attend university.

3. The heroine and the second male lead knew each other as children, but they were just friends, with no romantic feelings between them.

[New blurb written on 2024.4.28. Screenshot saved]

Coming Soon: After All These Years

[Reunion at the start | Cold, aloof man secretly loves a sweet girl]

Chu Huiyi is the only cherished daughter of the Chu family in the capital.

She meets Jiang Yi again at the age of twenty-four.

After years apart, the somewhat aloof boy in her memories has become a man others describe as cold-hearted, ruthless, and willing to do anything to get what he wants.

Since the Chu and Jiang families were close, Chu Huiyi had crossed paths with Jiang Yi a few times. But time had driven a chasm between them. The boy, who had never been easy to approach, now made her feel even more intimidated.

Naturally shy and gentle, Chu Huiyi quietly decided she would do her best to avoid him from now on.

But she found that she seemed to run into him all the time.

The young Mr. Jiang, whom everyone said kept others at arm’s length, was considerate and always mindful of boundaries with her. Sometimes, he even seemed... a little gentle?

Chu Huiyi was sure she was imagining things.

She tried to recall the few times she had encountered him when they were young.

But many memories had faded into the river of time.

One day, when Chu Huiyi was with Jiang Yi, she accidentally heard someone insulting him, calling him an “illegitimate child,” accusing him of “fighting for the family fortune,” and saying he was “ruthless and shameless.”

The words were too ugly to bear. Chu Huiyi glanced at him cautiously and tried to comfort him. “Don’t listen to them. They can’t measure up to you, so all they can do is attack your background.”

“You’re... truly exceptional now. You earned everything you have fair and square. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Is that so?” Jiang Yi looked up at her.

She said he was truly exceptional now.

“Exceptional enough... to have a chance at pursuing you?”

His tone was calm, yet his words stirred up a thousand waves.

Chu Huiyi froze.

“I’ve wanted to say that to you for a long time.”

A man who seemed cold and distant on the surface could secretly love a girl for ten years without wavering.

His love was rooted in his very bones. No matter how well he hid it, it would slip out in little ways, and that was why she had sensed his faint, intermittent tenderness.

Chu Huiyi stared, momentarily dazed.

This was so unlike him.

She had thought he probably didn’t remember her very well.

But who could have known that she was the only one who had forgotten those fragments of their past?

And the aloof boy from those fragments had quietly climbed his way up, where no one could see.

All so that one day, he could stand by her side.

P.S.:

1. “Hui” means delicate and lovely, with gentle grace. The heroine comes from a prominent family and is their only daughter, with a distinguished status. The hero is an illegitimate child, and when they were young, there was a great gap between them.

2. The hero’s personality is shaped by his upbringing, but he will be very gentle with the heroine, and only with her.

[After All These Years, His Wish Comes True]

[Blurb written on 2024.8.4. Screenshot saved]

Theme: Strive to become a better version of yourself