Breaking Up Before the Snow Falls

[The companion story, We're Just Friends, is currently being updated.]

[It's a long story, because it follows the tumultuous eight years of their love.]

At first: world-weary young master vs. clear-headed female student

After their reunion: powerful Beijing big shot vs. talented female director

Reunion after a long separation x broken up but reunited x later entertainment industry

Equal focus on both periods, not a strict broken-up-and-reunited story

“I said we'd break up before the snow fell. Later, I moved to a city where it never snows, planning to spend the rest of my life living on memories.”

Reunion scene:

On a rainy night in the suburbs, Liang Juan faces the brightly lit film set, where people are waiting for her to return and take charge. Behind her stands Lu Henan in a dark puddle, begging for even one glance of compassion.

Without hesitation, Liang Juan steps toward the light.

A few steps later, as if she remembers something, she turns her head slightly and says coolly, “Oh, right. I forgot to congratulate Mr. Lu on the birth of his child.”

Lu Henan, usually so composed and dignified, loses his footing on this rainy night.

He grits his teeth, doing his best to stay calm and collected.

“Liang Juan, you should know I have neither the interest nor the obligation to be another man's child's father.”

“Unless the child's mother is you.”

Everyone says a young master and a female student are bound to have a bad ending.

Lu Henan refuses to believe it. He insists that he and Liang Juan will have a happy ending.

Heroine's blurb:

In college, Liang Juan had a passionate but ill-fated relationship with a famous young master from Jingzhou.

The year they broke up, she got nothing of substance from the relationship and nearly lost her life.

Perhaps because he thought she had suffered so much, the man left her a casual promise.

“If there's ever anything you can't handle, no matter how tricky or difficult, don't worry about whether the Lu family has fallen. As long as the papers haven't reported Lu Henan's death, contact his people and they'll take care of it.”

In the fifth year of having nothing to do with each other, she contacts him again, looking embarrassed as she asks him to honor his promise.

“Can you help me find a cardiac surgeon in Hong Kong? Someone who can perform heart surgery on a newborn.”

Hero's blurb:

For the first half of his life, Lu Henan has lived by the principle that you take life one day at a time.

It isn't until he arrives in Beicheng at twenty-four and stakes the rest of his life on a northern girl who's neither gentle nor considerate that he dares to hope he might live to be a hundred.

During the five years after they break up, every long, sleepless night, when he closes his eyes, all he sees are her eyes, filled with pain yet stubbornly refusing to shed a tear first.

She said, “Lu Henan, I don't want the self-deception of sharing the snow and growing old together. If this relationship is destined to end badly, then let's break up before the snow falls.”

She said, “Neither of us should leave the other with hopes, and neither of us should leave ourselves a way out.”

The leads are in a proper relationship from beginning to end. There is not the slightest impropriety between them.

The heroine is clear-headed and independent throughout. She's neither useless nor a submissive wife nor a drama queen.

See the author's note in Chapter 15 for specific content warnings.

Feel free to discuss the plot, but no writing advice, please.

-------------------Coming soon

We're Just Friends

Reunion after a long separation x secret crush x healing

The orderly shore breeze vs. the untamed reef in the sea

Lu Yannan x Zhou An

Zhou An knows how to flirt. His carefully measured warmth, tucked into his cool manner, leaves Lu Yannan unable to defend herself.

The first meeting: dusk, rooftop of an abandoned school building.

Lu Yannan steps into the long shadow before her, doing something calculated in the most casual, carefree tone she can manage.

“Hey, can I borrow your lighter?”

With smoke curling around them, Zhou An holds it out. His cool fingertips brush the warm, trembling palm of the girl beside him.

But only a moment later, he takes the lighter back.

“You look so well-behaved. You smoke?”

Zhou An gives Lu Yannan's clean-cut, proud face a teasing look. His lazy, distant posture makes it clear he doesn't take her seriously.

“Still, smoking is bad for you. You should quit.”

Later, Lu Yannan becomes the only girl among Zhou An's many friends. Her long hair finally brushes his shoulder, and when they take photos, the others crowd around them so she can stand by his side.

In the crowd, he's still the center of attention.

But when a girl asks him for a ride, he leaves her standing there, then personally puts a helmet on Lu Yannan's head. Looking into her clear, stubborn eyes, he says, word by word, with a gentle, roguish smile:

“Sorry, I don't give rides to people I don't know.”

He's also good at hurting people.

The year they graduate, their friends gather in noisy little groups. Zhou An, who has always stayed within five meters of Lu Yannan, isn't by her side.

Watching one friend after another summon the courage to confess just before graduation, Lu Yannan, emboldened by alcohol, calls the number she knows by heart.

After a long silence, Zhou An's first words are just as familiar as ever. He affectionately calls her by her nickname.

“Zhuzhu, you don't love me. You're just a little emotionally dependent on me, and we...”

His hoarse voice suddenly trails off.

Lu Yannan grips her phone, her eyes opened wide as she fights back the tears.

She waits silently for him to reject her.

“And we're just friends.”

Years later, she sees Zhou An again at an alumni reunion.

He's as dazzling as ever, with plenty of women chasing after him and plenty of women in love with him.

At the banquet, the two of them, who never cross paths, sit facing each other all evening without once meeting each other's gaze.

An old friend who knows the story nudges Zhou An, winking and teasing him on purpose.

“So, what are you and Miss Lu now?”

Zhou An says nothing, merely glancing at her with an ambiguous look. The other old friends at the table exchange knowing smiles.

Only after the laughter dies down does Lu Yannan smoothly pick up the conversation, raising her glass toward Zhou An from a distance.

“What could we be?”

“We're just friends.”

Then she smiles faintly and drains her glass.

She raises a toast to old love and smiles at someone from her past.

But she turns away too quickly to see Zhou An's carefully maintained nonchalance dissolve on the spot.

[Third-person perspective]

To get some peace and quiet, Lu Yannan stands in the hallway smoking. Someone follows her and lights a cigarette, imitating her, but her technique is clumsy and she chokes on the first drag, tears streaming down her face.

Lu Yannan has heard of her. She's one of the most passionate, persistent women to pursue Zhou An in recent years.

Lu Yannan turns to her and, out of kindness, offers her an unopened bottle of water.

“Smoking is bad for you. If you aren't addicted, you should quit while you can.”

The girl hesitates. But, thinking of Lu Yannan and Zhou An's extremely ambiguous relationship, she still refuses to take it.

Lu Yannan understands and withdraws her hand. After a few seconds, she flicks away the ash and decides to get to the point.

“Besides, Zhou An doesn't like women who smoke.”

The girl looks stunned and clearly doesn't believe her.

Because just two nights ago, under the dim streetlights in an open-air parking lot, she saw Zhou An shielding a flame from the cold wind, head lowered, lighting a cigarette for her with a meek, obedient look.

Theme: Be a clear-headed romantic