Life at the Xingshan B&B

[Inn life] [Short happy ending] [Light road-trip plot] [Fake reconciliation after a breakup]

#There's a camper-van road-trip story in my collection too. Come check it out~ (@°3°@)

#The place names are made up, but the setting is based on Yunnan.

By the white wall beside the inn's entrance, Shi Yunxing was checking the position for the wooden sign when his first guest arrived.

It was a humid summer, and the hills behind the inn were carpeted in green.

Gong Jing, dressed in a plain black T-shirt with one hand in his pocket, sauntered up and steadied the wooden sign with one hand.

As a guest, he had no sense of personal boundaries. He made shameless demands with such audacity.

"Boss, that really hurt. The nail hit me."

"What are you going to do about it? Give me a discount."

"I'll rent the place for a year for 300,000. And hire me as the face of the inn, at the front desk."

Shi Yunxing had only just pressed the nail lightly against the wall. He hadn't even lifted his hammer.

He looked down. Gong Jing's long, slender fingers, their joints clearly defined, were holding the edge of the sign. They were a good ten thousand miles from the hammer.

What a troublemaker.

Shi Yunxing asked, "Do we know each other?"

His calm, unruffled eyes held the stillness of a green wilderness. He seemed to genuinely see Gong Jing as a stranger.

Gong Jing lowered his head and curled his lips into a smile. "We don't." His former deskmate.

Shi Yunxing secured the sign with three strikes, hung it up, and stepped away from the arm Gong Jing had pressed against the wall. He smiled.

"Then I'm afraid I can't give you a discount."

Shi Yunxing's father was obsessed with four things:

Drinking, gambling, beating Shi Yunxing, and forcing him to become a successful man who would be filial to him and buy him a mansion and luxury cars so he could live like a rich man.

He'd spent the first half of his life leeching off his parents and wife, and planned to live off his son in the second half. He had his whole scheme worked out.

So in Shi Yunxing's memories of high school,

there was nothing but studying, studying, and more studying.

And a tree Gong Jing had told him about.

A memory of the rainbow eucalyptus.

He was barren and dull, like a grain of sand that couldn't be chewed apart. Only Gong Jing had tried to pry open that taciturn shell and see his vibrant heart.

Later, Shi Yunxing grew tired of money and fame and opened an inn in the green mountains.

Gong Jing was the first to come looking for him.

*

It seemed that if you came from a good family, were handsome, and had terrible grades, people would naturally assume you were a lazy failure and label you as someone who'd chosen to fall behind.

That way, no one would try to control you.

But Gong Jing only wanted to hear one simple affirmation:

"You can do it."

The same things his parents had said to his twin brother, not:

"You're useless. You're not fit to hold a candle to your brother. We should never have had you. You made your brother sickly from childhood."

Later, his deskmate, the top student in their grade, said those words of encouragement to him again and again.

But they'd been apart for many years.

Resilient reeds bent with the wind, falling into the humid mountains.

Shi Yunxing, bottom × Gong Jing, top

A sleep-deprived author wrote this passionate blurb at two in the morning. I might revise it later.

(Writing blurbs is so hard QWQ)

Here's a thin little preview of my upcoming story, Time-Space Reversal of Human and Pet Status. Letting it catch some sunshine~

If you're interested, come take a look~ Thanks~ Mwah~

Blurb:

Danguo feels like something has been wrong lately.

Nothing unusual has happened, and work has been going fine, but he feels like his memories are starting to disappear. More and more things are getting blurry.

He even seems to be hallucinating. When Danguo opens his eyes, the whole house looks like it's covered in disorienting fluff, as if his eyes had swallowed ten pounds of down feathers. Then, the next second, it disappears.

Mysterious, uncanny shadows keep drifting past the window at night. Even more absurdly, he thinks something is off about his beloved pet bird.

The fluffy little bird seems to be talking to someone, and now and then a piercing red gleam flashes in its round black eyes.

Then, somehow, he seems to fall into the bird's eye.

Anyway, when he gets back up, the whole world is wrong.

His bird has become taller than a person.

He turns his head and sees the neighbor's beagle outside the window, now as big as a cow, racing along a track dozens of meters up in the sky.

A giant cat celebrity on TV is hosting a variety show.

Danguo panics and hugs his bird. "Baby, what's happened to this world? Why are all the pets acting so weird?"

The fluffy white bird before him changes form. Its human shape is a highly saturated white, with white hair and brown eyes, like an angel. It tilts its head. "What pets? You're the pet, human."

"You're a pet duck that hatched from a bird's egg."

Danguo screams!!!!!!!

"I must be sick."

The bird frowns and sheds a tear in sympathy. "Can I take you to the pet hospital? Humans shouldn't be afraid of going to the hospital. It's okay, human. You can get lots of little illnesses that cost 3,000 yuan. The bird has plenty of money."

Theme: The mundane world blinds me, but I defy the crowd.