One autumn, when she was sixteen, Jiang Song rescued a boy in an alley.
At the time, he was trapped and surrounded by a group of people, yet his back remained ramrod straight. His eyes and brows were edged with pride, colder than autumn frost.
Later, he moved into the house next door to hers at No. 49 Qingyu Alley. Every few days, Jiang Song heard the sounds of beating and scolding from inside.
The noise shattered the alley's quiet, and shattered her dreams, too.
On a rainy night in the southern city, the alley lamps glowed dimly, and the boy's shadow stretched long.
Jiang Song saw him thrown out of the house. He stood against the wall, his thin figure like a wisp of a lonely ghost.
Out of pity, she walked over with an umbrella and held it above his head without saying a word.
The boy looked at her deeply, gave a scornful laugh, and pushed her umbrella aside.
-
All the children in the alley were afraid of Duan Wenqi.
He was solitary and gloomy, his face always marked with fresh bruises over old ones. A shadow always lingered behind him, impossible to disperse.
He was the night in the alley; Jiang Song was the moon hanging high in the sky.
They should never have crossed paths, yet they became the most secret story of that autumn.
A naive girl and a boy with a hard life dreamed of becoming the protagonists of their own fate, only to be caught in its grasp.
The night their relationship came to light, Jiang Song's parents took her away in the middle of the night. Duan Wenqi's father beat him especially brutally, the blows echoing through the entire northern stretch of Qingyu Alley.
-
"I often think back to that autumn. Back then, I didn't know what love was. I only saw him climb over the courtyard wall to catch me a rabbit, his hands covered in bloody scratches. He took me up to the roof, where we counted the stars in what was, for that era, a relatively clear sky. He looked at me, rainwater dripping from his bangs into his ink-dark eyes. So many surging feelings came crashing in, uprooting mountains and trees, then remained in that beautiful autumn we could never return to."
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* Both are each other's first and only, happy ending
* Coming-of-age ensemble cast / redemption / slow burn
* They don't define their relationship before adulthood, and there are no intimate scenes
* Blurb dated 2026.2.22
Message: Several kinds of lives
