An Eye for Couples

[Sweet campus slice of life] [Unrequited love becomes mutual] [Straight guy falls for a man] [Each other's first love] [From getting on each other's nerves to having eyes only for each other]

Lin Haomiao knows that when it's time to study, you should study hard. That's why he's always excelled at Chaoyang No. 1 High School, known as a feeder school for Tsinghua and Peking University.

He even gets his best friend Su Yunsheng into the same class.

The two are classmates again, inseparable as ever.

Rumor has it they're childhood friends and neighbors, close enough to share a pair of pants.

They're so close that after same-sex marriage is legalized, the discipline director, who sometimes catches students dating, wishes he could hold them up as a cautionary example.

So everyone starts looking at them more and more strangely.

Lin Haomiao can't stand it anymore, so he decides to make their pretend relationship real and show those idiots what an actual couple looks like.

Unfortunately, it barely works. Everyone just says, "Is that it? Don't you always act like this?"

Meanwhile, Su Yunsheng has already got one foot in the dream of his unrequited love coming true.

When Lin Haomiao learns his childhood friend has a crush on him, he says, "Sorry, I'm straight. Let's just go back to being buddies."

Su Yunsheng has already had a taste of the good stuff. He agrees out loud, but deep down, he can't bear to stop at being "buddies."

Bend too far and you break. Keep insisting you're straight and you'll bend eventually.

Su Yunsheng believes that if he plays his cards right, even the hardest stone can be worn away.

Bonus scene:

Years later, Chaoyang No. 1 High School holds an anniversary celebration and invites two famous alumni who are now married.

At the evening reception, the discipline director, drunk out of his mind, slings an arm around each of their shoulders and boasts, "I knew those two had something going on. Back in the day, I caught them with their arms around each other, and they still wouldn't admit it. They pointed at two girls walking by hand in hand and asked why I wasn't arresting them. They even accused me of sexism!"

The director snorts and continues with the look of someone who saw it all coming. "You can't compare yourselves to girls! I've spent decades educating students. I've got an eye for people. There are thousands of students dating behind our backs, and I'll catch every last pair!"

The two famous alumni can only suffer in silence. ...We really weren't a thing back then.

You might not believe it, but at first, we couldn't stand each other.

Lin Haomiao x Su Yunsheng

A sunny, cheerful top student on the surface, but a people-pleaser at heart, as the bottom x a cold, world-weary artist with top-notch cooking skills as the top

Reader's guide:

1. Bottom-focused, 1v1, each other's first love. They only officially start dating as adults.

2. Their relationship goes from rivals to buddies to lovers.

3. The story begins when they're already buddies. The rival stage is brief and appears in flashbacks.

4. The top makes the bottom fall for men (though he wasn't all that straight to begin with).

5. There will be a little food content.

6. An unconventional marriage-before-love story.

Theme: Study hard and keep improving every day.