The Mountain Mist Lingers

[This is the novella with the most complete outline so far. I'll start it after finishing Spectrum.]

Wei Yang had a boyfriend once in high school. He was the most eye-catching boy at school at the time.

Everyone thought they would stay together forever, but Wei Yang broke up with him before her senior year and left to study abroad.

Four years later, Wei Yang graduated and returned to China, only to cross paths with her ex-boyfriend again.

Pei Lin was now a completely different person. He had become a rising power in the capital, someone everyone respected, regardless of their own standing.

The day they reunited, Pei Lin was handsome and aloof, acting as if she didn't exist.

Wei Yang was just as nonchalant, as though she had long forgotten their unforgettable past. She sent her resume to his company, and from then on, they saw each other every day.

Everyone knew President Pei was dissatisfied with the new intern in every way, and had only refrained from firing her out of consideration for someone else's feelings. They didn't know that one night on a business trip, Pei Lin had burst into her room, pinned Wei Yang to the bed, kissed his way down her back to the small of her waist, and bitten her hard enough to leave red marks.

Wei Yang welcomed him gently, stroking Pei Lin's face, and felt something cold and wet beneath her hand.

He was crying.

"Pei Lin," she said softly. "Who am I?"

Pei Lin's eyes reddened as tears streamed down his face. In a hoarse voice, he said, "...Wei Yang."

"You're Wei Yang."

The woman who had once given him everything, then cruelly abandoned him and left without a word.

-

Hechuan County produced a provincial top scorer, the first in twenty years and the only one for the next twenty. The locals talked about it for over half a year. Years later, Pei Lin's low-resolution ID photo still hung in Hechuan High School's enrollment brochure: a spirited young man, so handsome he was almost intimidating.

Only Pei Lin knew that he hadn't slept at all the night before the first day of the college entrance exams. He knew Wei Yang would leave Hechuan that day.

As dawn began to break, the boy lay in bed with red, swollen eyes from crying.

[House-trained guard dog x unruly hunter]

Wei Yang always thought she had never loved Pei Lin.

Until she went to study in America and began dreaming of him often.

In her dreams, they were still teenagers. High school Pei Lin was wild and arrogant, all sharp edges and fierce pride, a tough guy no one dared approach or provoke.

And Wei Yang was his deskmate.

Whenever Wei Yang said she wanted to touch his head, Pei Lin would curse under his breath, drop his pen, and bend his neck toward her, the tips of his ears turning red as his voice grew husky.

"Then hurry up and touch it."

-

After waking from countless dreams, Wei Yang finally decided to return to China and plan a long-awaited reunion with her first love.

-

○ A bittersweet reunion after a breakup, told in chronological order, half school life and half working life.

○ As the blurb says, the male lead is absurdly strong: he sat the provincial exams after a sleepless night, still heartbroken, and came first in the province. But I promise you'll finish this thinking the female lead is even more extraordinary.

○ The blurb might sound like a dog-training story, but I plan to write about two people deeply in love, as the theme suggests.

○ He's a rabid dog to everyone else and a loyal dog to her. When they first reunite, he's an abandoned dog pretending to be fierce. A hopeless romantic through and through: if she says she loves him, he'll forgive her anything.

Theme: We entangle and owe each other, then love each other for a lifetime.