When Youth Fell in Battle

Jin Ou x He Siyun

Blurb:

An old, beat-up converted minibus is parked beside a construction site. It’s the boy’s temporary home. The little finger on his left hand is missing part of its length.

The girl’s uncontrollable tears fall, one by one, onto the back of his hand.

“My skin’s rough… I’m not like you girls. I can’t even feel it, and it doesn’t hurt.” He raises a hand to wipe away her tears. “There, it’s okay. It’s all right.”

She longs to kiss those rough hands, so full of scars, but she has no right to. She isn’t his girlfriend.

“I’m going back to work. You can cook. We’ll probably be done in a little over an hour.”

The girl forces her tears back and walks to the rear of the bus, searching the storage rack for ingredients she can use.

They cook outside the bus, on a simple folding stove.

…

Once, he was the pride of the heavens, while she was a poor girl.

Now their fates have been reversed. He is drowning in debt, has dropped out of school to work, and has become a rough laborer at a construction site. Sorrow and pain weigh down his young body. She has gone to university, cool and stunningly beautiful, like a flame falling through a frosty sky, and has become the goddess all the boys pursue.

He wants to run away.

She refuses to leave.

*A rough-and-tumble romance, though he’s not that rough; healing and inspirational; happy ending.

Theme: Healing and inspiration.