Dwelling in Spring

Weibo: @Shi Hangwen Ye

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Lu Yuanzhao and Shen Huaixu were the most estranged-looking couple in their social circle.

Rumor had it that the eldest son of the Shen family, Shen Huaixu, had been sleeping around and got Lu Yuanzhao pregnant, so the two married because of the baby.

Everyone said they had no real affection for each other. In the first year of their marriage, Shen Huaixu was transferred to the company’s overseas branch.

Lu Yuanzhao was left alone at home, caring for their child while continuing her studies and working toward her doctorate.

No one expected that in the fourth year of their marriage, after earning her doctorate, Lu Yuanzhao would bring out their prenuptial agreement and demand a divorce from Shen Huaixu.

-

The night she first met Shen Huaixu, Lu Yuanzhao was close to finishing her master’s degree and fed up with her family pushing her to go on dates. She had just decided to skip marriage altogether and find a suitable man to have a child with.

She was settled in the south, anyway. She could find an attractive, intelligent man in Beijing, date him for a few months, get pregnant, then find an excuse to return south. In ten years or so, the whole thing would be behind her.

Her mother could have a grandchild, and she could escape the constraints of marriage.

It was the perfect solution.

That night, Lu Yuanzhao met her cousin Qi Qi at a bar in Houhai. She looked through the profiles of potential fathers her cousin had shortlisted, then regretfully asked her to find more. She hadn’t liked a single one.

But while going to the restroom, Lu Yuanzhao spotted a face at the corner of the bar’s hallway, one that bore a striking resemblance to her late first love. In a matter of moments, she decided to break the propriety that had been ingrained in her since childhood.

She wanted that man.

So she concealed her identity and approached the bespectacled, bookish man, deliberately flirting with him until she got what she wanted.

The day she found out she was pregnant, Lu Yuanzhao dumped him without a second thought, bought a plane ticket, and returned to the shores of West Lake, the place she’d been dreaming of all spring.

-

In the third month of Lu Yuanzhao’s pregnancy, her mother went to a temple to pray for a jade Buddha and asked a friend who was heading south to deliver it to her daughter.

When the doorbell rang, Lu Yuanzhao went downstairs to greet the visitor. That was how she came face-to-face with Shen Huaixu, who had come with his aunt to visit a friend.

“The baby’s father was a college student,” Lu Yuanzhao sobbed, crying and sniffling as she explained to her visitor. “He died in a car accident a while ago.”

All that was left was for him to sit there, sighing and feeling sorry for her.

That evening, after Shen Huaixu and his family elders had left, the housekeeper told her someone outside wanted to see her.

Lu Yuanzhao thought it was Qi Qi, who had come south to stay with her. She opened the door, confused, and in the brilliant lights saw the man’s face, dark as a mass of storm clouds.

“The baby’s father is dead?” Shen Huaixu stopped her from closing the door. Afraid of hurting her, he stood right in front of her. “Then what am I?”

“Oh.” Lu Yuanzhao gave him a cold glance and invited him to leave. “You’re just a man I was with before I got pregnant.”

[Reading notes]

The leads are already divorced at the beginning and have a daughter. The past is revealed through flashbacks.

Proud, bold cultural relic restorer X devoted, persistent company president

Male stand-in | Keeping the daughter, losing the father | Pregnancy and running away | Divorce first, love later

Both leads are each other’s only partners. The female lead had a first love who died young.

Cold female lead and humble male lead

The female lead doesn’t fall in love at first, while the male lead has had a crush on her for years.

Five-year age gap. Past and present interwoven.

Theme: May we live without fear, and be free.