The Moon's Foreshadowing

[Drafting, Definitely Not Abandoned]

Lin Che x Zhou Zhilin

What lies between childhood sweethearts and finding their way back to each other?

Childhood friends? First love? The bloom of youth? A genius girlfriend? Heroine worship?

A personal headcanon:

A take-charge lover,

She stands there like a flag flying in the wind atop a high ridge.

Meeting at the summit: I've made it. Are you coming?

From then on, your whole world exists to lift you higher.

Go on, walk toward her!

The sound of your steps as you shatter the heavens is the loudest applause she hears as she looks down on the world.

Zhou Zhilin, a woman who stands behind the capital, a true power broker in the shadows. She is the goddaughter Lin Che's mother formally welcomed into the family at a banquet.

She was the genius girlfriend Lin Che secretly competed with in the childhood residential compound, and the only heroine Lin Che worshipped as a girl.

She was also the only girl Lin Che ever kissed in those heady years of youth.

Perhaps she isn't the right answer to Lin Che's life, but she is surely the exam Lin Che has spent half her life taking.

After years apart, she is the one Lin Che has kept in her heart, freshly returned from abroad.

No matter where Lin Che is posted, she is always the youngest person in charge of the local department.

She is the player across the board from Zhou Zhilin, always making the first move, the brightest and most glaring point of comparison in Zhou Zhilin's life.

And in those years spent overseas, she was the breath Zhou Zhilin counted to three before speaking on their transoceanic calls.

Perhaps she was never a variable in Zhou Zhilin's plans, but she was the one margin of error allowed in all her games of strategy.

After years apart, she is the one light Zhou Zhilin stays rooted in place for.

"Long time no see, President Zhou."

"Long time no see, Lin Che."

They grew up hand in hand. When they meet again, will their fingers tremble at the moment they shake hands?

If the distance between childhood sweethearts and finding their way back to each other is filled with the pride that keeps neither willing to bow their head first, and a waiting game between two evenly matched opponents,

then I'll make your world lose my gravity, so that at your so-called summit, you can feel a cold no one else can match.

So, what is the moon foreshadowing?

It is the exam she has spent half her life taking, and also the game of chess she has spent half her life setting up.

A few words from the author:

The author knows nothing about officialdom or investing. The story is entirely fictional, so please don't look for real-world logic in it.

All departments, positions, and forms of address in this story have no connection to reality.

This is a romance novel wearing the trappings of a career story. Please don't read too much into it.

Sweet romance, happy ending.

Blurb subject to change and expansion.

2025.11.29

Theme: Complementing each other.