Flower Bud Berry

*Professional sports / Weekly serialized manga

*Childhood friends / Slightly everyone-falls-for-them / Reunion after a long separation / Secret male crush

A handsome childhood friend who's cold about everything except that one thing x a warm and beloved childhood friend

Writing this to feed my own craving, I'm so starved for it T T

[1]

Xuelai once had a childhood friend.

That boy was stubborn and never gave in to her. He fought with Xuelai and argued with her from the time they were little. They studied and played together, were sweet on each other, and ate and slept at her house.

Then came the day he was chosen to go overseas for youth training.

The boy, now a little more grown up, stood in front of Xuelai, weeping inconsolably, his heart breaking with grief.

"He was always giving me a hard time, and he had a bad temper," Xuelai thought.

"But Zhou Hanjiang is a kind boy deep down."

From that day on, the boy named Zhou Hanjiang began to make a name for himself.

He was called up while training in Europe, shot to fame, and won honors, creating countless miracles.

The newspapers said he had the bearing of a king. Some said he would carry the future on his shoulders.

And Xuelai quietly wished in her heart:

May Zhou Hanjiang reach a distant place she has never seen.

[2]

Zhou Hanjiang, the most expensive signing of the summer transfer window, having set his transfer fee record several times. Twenty-two years old, a striker, not yet in his prime, with extraordinary talent, top-tier physical attributes, a stubborn nature, and few words.

Nobody knew the tears Zhou Hanjiang shed on the day he left were for her.

That guy who vanished without a trace. The bastard who only ever smiled at him. The idiot who didn't understand people's hearts.

The troublemaker caught up in a brawl, whom he would risk his life to protect. The girl he'd searched for desperately in this world and finally found by the shore.

His childhood friend.

His Xuelai.

[Little extra]

Xuelai had slept especially well the night before.

After getting up, she took a bath, hummed a tune, and opened the balcony doors to let the European mid-spring sunshine pour into the bedroom.

Zhou Hanjiang, however, seemed to be in a rotten mood. He sat with his long legs stretched out, leaning against the headboard without saying a word.

Xuelai smiled like a little sun. "What's wrong? Bad mood because you woke up?"

At that, Zhou Hanjiang finally lifted his eyes, looking listlessly at Xuelai's pretty, smiling face.

Then he asked:

", You must have cursed me online plenty of times, right?"

Xuelai froze. "Huh?"

Zhou Hanjiang said gloomily, "You always act so serious when you tell me sweet little lies, saying I'm your most important childhood friend, that you'll always wish me well, wish me victory, wish me luck in battle, but behind my back, you've been cursing me plenty, haven't you?"

Childhood friend: "???"

"Last night, I barely did anything to you," the young striker said, making a lazy little gesture. "And you were crying and calling me by all those insulting nicknames, saying I'm a nepotism case, calling me Lord Jiang and the Crown Prince. You said it so naturally... I was thinking, even if you put one of my real haters in front of me, they couldn't insult me that naturally to my face."

Xuelai: "..."

The young striker, worth over a hundred million, looked her over and said with genuine admiration:

"You're really hopeless."

*A Mediterranean-style childhood friends romance and reunion after a long separation

*No real-life inspirations whatsoever. Even the locations are only borrowed from European leagues.

*All the foreign-language dialogue in this story is stuff I made up based on how foreigners talk. If you've studied a foreign language, please just laugh it off (bowing, bowing).

*Just a sweet story with very little drama.

Theme: In competitive sports, losing is the original sin.