Spring Wine [GL]

"Cool, slightly timid, innocent younger top × gentle, scheming older sister who's divorced"

"Bar owner × photographer" will go premium on the 15th. The paywalled chapters will start from Chapter 21, so please be careful if you've already read it!

My ongoing novel, Us Beyond Time, is a romance across time and space. The first half is complete, with over 400,000 words. It's nice and substantial, so feel free to dig in!

This Story

[Note: 1. This is a women-only world, and the caregiver is the younger one.

2. They meet after the divorce, but the child is the ex-wife's. This setup will not change.

3. The setting is fictional. The child is conceived by both parties at random through the effects of a certain drug. You can think of it as similar to the river in the Land of Women.

4. This story includes a strong dose of the author's kinky preferences (referring to Xiao's condition), so please read with caution!!]

1.

Ruan Shengyi runs a bar by herself, keeping irregular hours and losing track of day and night. Yet on an early autumn night, she sees the Morning Star.

She tests the woman with alcohol and presses closer, but the woman shows neither anger nor resentment.

She feels guilty, but the woman remains perfectly composed.

She successfully offers the woman a glass, and the woman is about to take a sip.

Ruan Shengyi is genuinely flustered.

She is the one who flees, but the woman is the one who chases after her.

Cornered in the changing room, Ruan Shengyi feels the woman lift her chin and whisper softly, "Do you want to kiss me?"

2.

A photography studio opens across the street from Ruan Shengyi's bar. Its owner is the woman from that night. Her name is Xiao Wenyu.

She's divorced.

Ruan Shengyi doesn't consider herself a paragon of virtue, so she decides to take advantage of the situation.

She tries to invite Xiao Wenyu out to dinner, but meeting every day at breakfast time would be too strange.

She tries to help Xiao Wenyu's business, but the woman's photography is so good that she soon becomes famous all along the street and has no need for Ruan Shengyi's so-called help.

Ruan Shengyi rarely feels inferior, but in front of Xiao Wenyu, she feels embarrassed for the first time.

Until one day, the photography studio mysteriously loses power. Ruan Shengyi feels her way over to help, but can't find the circuit breaker. All she sees is Xiao Wenyu collapsed on the floor, and...

"Boss Xiao, what's going on with this child?"

3.

On the day the first snow falls, Xiao Wenyu rushes to the police station.

The person who called her was her so-called ex-wife, who even sneers when she sees Xiao Wenyu's swollen belly.

But the person Xiao Wenyu takes away is Ruan Shengyi, the bar owner across the street, who has been sulking with her for over a week. At the door, the bar owner still looks like an angry pufferfish, muttering and refusing to explain anything.

Xiao Wenyu: "Boss Ruan..."

Ruan Shengyi: "I don't know anything. She ran into my fist on her own."

Xiao Wenyu: "...From today on, let me pursue you instead, okay?"

4.

Love is the heart-fluttering feeling beneath the shimmering blue lights when you first meet. But to keep loving someone is to look forward to them, year after year, forever.

5.

"So there's something Boss Ruan is afraid of after all?"

"It's all right. You can try it slowly."

"Very good."

"Great."

"Aren't you doing really well?"

"You've found exactly the right spot."

"Is this really your first time, Boss Ruan?"

Ruan Shengyi couldn't take it anymore. She covered Xiao Wenyu's mouth and, pressing down on her wildly twitching brow, said, "It's just my first time massaging a pregnant woman's ankle. It's not my first time learning to walk. You don't have to take it this far."

Xiao Wenyu caught her finger between her lips in return, raising an eyebrow. "I like it."

Coming Soon

[Small-town fiction + melodrama. Enter at your own risk if it's not your thing.]

[The story takes place in 1998 and 2023, in a fictional location.]

*

Eight-year-old Yue Chengqi really likes Aunt Su Ye, who often visits her home. Su Ye is decisive and efficient, and her long, jet-black hair always streams behind her as she walks. She wears a well-tailored black suit every day and keeps a cold expression, like an icy goddess.

But the icy goddess brings her lots of tasty treats and fun things from time to time. She jokes with Yue Chengqi and laughs with her.

Twenty-two-year-old Yue Chengqi meets twenty-year-old Su Ye. Su Ye still has a baby face, and her personality is just as immature. To put it simply, she's a crybaby.

The first time she sees Yue Chengqi, she bursts into tears, sobbing for half an hour over the tiny wound, less than three centimeters long, that Yue Chengqi accidentally got.

Yue Chengqi: ...Are you planning to disinfect me with your tears?

Su Ye: No, but I can't help it, sob sob sob.

Damn it! Who could connect this crybaby with the stunning, mature woman she would become later?

Twenty-five-year-old Yue Chengqi meets forty-five-year-old Su Ye. Curled up under the covers, she asks carefully, "A Ye, are you still... afraid of thunder?"

*

Twenty-year-old Su Ye meets twenty-two-year-old Yue Huan, who falls from the sky. Yue Huan loves to smile. She encourages Su Ye to read more, introduces her to friends, teaches her to do business, tells her to cry less, and urges her to cherish her beautiful eyes.

Twenty-three-year-old Su Ye loses Yue Huan. Those who fall from the sky always disappear. Before Yue Huan leaves, she smiles and tells Su Ye: Eat well, because your future stomach problems will always make people worry; stop staying up so late, it's pitiful to have to dye your hair to keep it black when you're still so young; and remember, if you meet someone who loves you, give them a chance. Don't foolishly spend decades alone.

But she never tells Su Ye where to find Yue Huan.

Forty-year-old Su Ye looks at her niece, watching her face grow more and more like the person buried deep in her memories.

She thinks she's gone mad, madder than ever.

At forty-five, she seems to see Yue Huan again. Even though this person is wrapped in bandages from head to toe, those familiar eyes can't lie. Her voice trembles as she asks, "Are you Qiqi, or A Huan?"

*

In 1998, on a night filled with rumbling thunder, Su Ye will hide in Yue Huan's room with her quilt, clutching the hem of her clothes. "Sister, don't go. I'm scared."

In 2023, on a rainy afternoon, Yue Chengqi will carefully rub ointment on Su Ye's knees. She had gone to several traditional medicine clinics to get it, and now she nags endlessly: "I told you to take care of yourself. How did you end up with such bad rheumatism after only a few years of neglecting yourself?"

Then she gets kicked out.

*

Everything else is a coincidence, but my love for you isn't.

Theme: Mutual healing and becoming a new self.