Sink with Me into the Sea of Fluorescence

Mutual salvation | Reunion after a long separation | Small-town romance | HE | SC | Entire novel completed

Lin Chunchi had a secret,

a secret she kept for Liang Qiuyu.

In the twelfth year of their separation, her alcoholic father died before winter arrived. Lin Chunchi had no choice but to leave the foreign island where she had lived in seclusion for four years and return home to arrange his funeral.

She thought four years of isolation from the world would be enough to put many things behind her for good. But by chance, she saw that familiar face again. Liang Qiuyu was as still as a placid lake, and said to her without a ripple of emotion, "I don't know you."

She remembered the boy she had once rescued on a snowy night. Now he was standing right in front of her.

The snowy night, the luxury car, its trembling frame, and those repeated, shameful sounds had made up Liang Qiuyu's long nightmare throughout adolescence. The instant Lin Chunchi covered his eyes, their tangled fate had already been sealed.

They both hoped the other would be happy, at least happier than they were.

Had they really been happier than each other during those twelve years apart?

Liang Qiuyu cautiously touched her with his lips. Lin Chunchi didn't resist. Instead, she was the first to nip him gently with her teeth. If they didn't count that time outside the door, this was their first kiss, delayed until they were thirty. They were clumsy, but at least some of their old understanding remained.

The seagulls flapped their wings and flew away, leaving a flurry of noise in their ears. These silver gulls came here for the winter, flying in from Siberia every November and leaving again the following April. Liang Qiuyu's voice mingled with their cries:

"Love never disappears,

I've always been here,

Always have, always will."

They gazed at each other on the deserted shore,

embraced in the lingering night,

and kissed to the low murmur of the waves.

They understood each other without a word about the past.

She liked the feeling of being alive.

(Told across two timelines, clearly marked.)

Theme: After hardship comes happiness