Sinking Whale

[Puppy-love story / reunion after years apart / younger man / sweet romance]

[Originally titled The Whale Sinking off the West Coast]

(1)

As the eldest daughter and heir of the Chen family, Chen Zhao had been strict with herself, cold and decisive, all her life. Everything she did was for the sake of taking over the family empire from the matriarch and making it prosper.

Yet a few years ago, she did the most outrageous thing of all:

That day was Shen Que's twentieth birthday, and the first time they had been intimate.

Shen Que clung to her back, carrying a faint scent of mint. His expression was gentle as he said, "I was planning..."

Before he could finish, Chen Zhao stood up and got dressed, her voice calm.

"You know there's no place for you in my life plans."

Shen Que looked at her with dark, damp eyes, his eyelashes twitching slightly.

Before that, Chen Zhao had thought of Shen Que as gentle, obedient, considerate, and well-behaved, like a mild, quiet spring breeze across the grasslands.

He was living under someone else's roof, with no temper and no sharp edges.

But later she learned that the real Shen Que was covered in dangerous thorns, a beast roaming beneath the glaciers.

-

Years later, flocks of seagulls circled overhead as hundreds of courting Bryde's whales leapt from the water.

Shen Que stood in her way, his gaze burning.

"You dare say yes to his proposal, and I'll expose what you and I did in bed. Go ahead, see if I won't."

As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly pulled Chen Zhao underwater.

She sank into the deep sea, and just as she began to suffocate, Shen Que pulled her into his arms. Oxygen passed from his burning tongue...

(2)

The evening breeze ruffled Shen Que's hair by the lake.

Though she had seen his face hundreds of times, Chen Zhao found it strange now.

He was tall and young, like a glacier beneath a snow-covered Milky Way, standing firm even in the bitter cold of winter.

Chen Zhao remembered how, years ago, he had been a thin boy she brought back from the Pamirs.

[Cool and restrained vs. obedient but wolfish]

[My sea holds the slanted dreams of drifting whales]

Theme: Protect animals