Wild Rose

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[The male lead's pursuit of his wife after losing her / Adult emotional push and pull / Their positions reverse later]

[Resilient wild rose x heartless smiling fox]

#The one who once looked up to him loved him until disappointment froze her heart, then became someone he could never surpass

#The powerful man falls in love without realizing it, then ends up in the dust, begging for a love he cannot have

#A slow-burning romance between two people whose needs don't align#

A rose should bloom freely, not become someone's accessory or decorate someone's garden.

It turned out he was the barren earth, nourished by the rose.

A fresh rose, in a hurry, charges into the wind (dog holding a rose in its mouth)

-

[1]

Xia Gui was a rose that had bloomed from the mire.

A black one.

That was rather nice, because black made it hard to tell whether she'd been stained by the muck.

No one would notice the scars on her petals or the dried, withered edges.

Lu Tishuang was wealthy and gentle, with a naturally handsome face.

His features were strikingly sharp, but the languid warmth in his eyes softened them.

He treated people with measured kindness and old-fashioned courtesy. He never embarrassed anyone in public, but no one could take what they didn't deserve from him.

Plenty of people wanted to become one of his adornments.

But a black rose didn't belong with his black suit.

All his smiles, none of which reached his eyes, seemed fed by indifference. No one knew what he was thinking.

Xia Gui didn't know either.

Fortunately, they were both roses. Even a black one resembled a flower the color of red sand in some ways.

So the wild rose was picked up and brought home to be raised.

And so...

Lu Tishuang knelt on the ground, carefully shielding the hem of her skirt as he wiped the water from her calves.

His long, slender fingers held a white tissue. As his thumb bent, blue veins rose beneath his skin and ran along his knuckles to his wrist.

His hands were large enough to easily encircle Xia Gui's ankle.

"Orphan's Lament?" His warm breath brushed her skin as he asked, "Wearing such a bitter perfume. Are you blaming me?"

But in the end, she was only a wild rose. No one cared.

[2]

On the eve of the flowers' final bloom, despair came one wave after another.

Xia Gui left without looking back.

Gu Qingzhuo laughed at her departure, calling it naive.

She laughed at herself, knowing it would have been truly naive to stay.

[3]

They met again.

Lu Tishuang clenched the stem. Even as the thorns pierced him and blood ran down his hands, he didn't want to let go.

The young professor Li Xiang was gentle and considerate, with endless things to talk about with Xia Gui. He wanted to take her away from her gilded cage.

Even Gu Qingzhuo, the carefree playboy who never let anything touch him, had somehow gone from being at odds with Xia Gui to standing up for her.

So many people had been drawn to Xia Gui, whether as friends or lovers.

Xia Gui was the one who had won at love.

He had simply been too arrogant.

Lu Tishuang lowered his head and carefully trapped her in front of him, yet didn't dare kiss her.

A hazy plea spread across his once-confident dark eyes. "You can have anything you want."

"Then I want the Lu family." Xia Gui didn't hesitate.

All right.

Lu Tishuang could create sunlight and air for the rose, even become its nourishment.

He wanted to cradle the rose in his hands and make her bloom again.

"So you're using a temporary retreat to set a trap, waiting for me to walk into it?"

Lu Tishuang pushed up his glasses and swallowed his bitter smile. "Then can there be a trap? Will you walk into it?"

He could lay everything at her feet,

become soil, become air, become sunlight.

But would the battered rose ever look his way again?

#You gradually learned to love me, but by then I had already left

#Each thing may have been small, but together they piled up into disappointment

[A few little notes, including but not limited to]

1. The pursuit-after-breakup arc doesn't begin right away, but he does end up losing everything

2. Both leads are sexually inexperienced and have a happy ending, even though Mr. Lu is getting on in years

3. There's a five-year age gap, but they first met quite early, about five or six years ago

4. They're both a bit of a handful

5. The meaning of "white moonlight" is something else here

6. What else?

7. I'll add more if I think of anything

8. Oh, these emotionally tangled characters absolutely cannot communicate properly

9. The second male lead doesn't end up with her. He has his own couple, a love-hate relationship with a mature older sister who's a producer

Blurb written on October 24, 2023.

Theme: Make an effort to live.