Love Meets Its Match

Unrequited love comes true | Bittersweet and spicy-sweet | Push and pull to the extreme | One familiar face after another makes a move | [Utterly romantic, neurotic writer] x [Patient and good at putting on an act, aloof electrician] Blurb: Jin Jia came back. Wen Jiayi slept with her once. Jin Jia was leaving. Wen Jiayi slept with her several more times. Then Jin Jia took Wen Jiayi away with her. A story about a woman in her thirties who swears she only wants a bedmate, then gets in way over her head. 1. Jin Jia had spent six years in Beijing. She’d saved some money and made a name for herself, but she’d also developed bipolar disorder. After taking a double blow to her career and love life, she decided to leave Beijing and return to her hometown, to the old house her grandmother had left her. When Wen Jiayi heard the news, her hand shook and she knocked over the wine on the table. Why was Jin Jia coming back? After that, she lay awake night after night, unable to think of anything but the brown gourd-shaped birthmark on the right side of A-Man Jin’s butt. Was it still there? 2. Wen Jiayi was one of the few young people who had stayed in town. She took any odd job and earned money however she could. When Jin Jia needed to renovate her old house, a childhood friend recommended Wen Jiayi. To Jin Jia, Wen Jiayi was beautiful, with a lovely voice, strong, muscular arms, and long fingers. She was good at her work, too. Looking at all those fine qualities, Jin Jia’s thoughts ran wild. What a waste. Just imagine if she put them to use on me... So Jin Jia tried every trick in the book to show up in front of Wen Jiayi in a different way every day. But Wen Jiayi stayed frosty in the face of her obvious flirting. Jin Jia finally couldn’t take Wen Jiayi’s coldness and complained to their mutual friend: “Is she frigid or something? She’s friendlier to dogs than she is to me!” Her friend: “You’re unbelievable! You really don’t remember her?” 3. Then came that night when they were both drunk. Jin Jia not only let Wen Jiayi sleep in her bed, but took the chance to pin her down. She stroked Wen Jiayi’s earlobe with her fingers, her warm breath scorching the side of her neck. She kissed her and said: “You’ve liked me for so long. Why didn’t you say anything?” “Wen Jiayi, love isn’t something you can just talk about... You have to do it more, get more practice.” Reading guide: Still a warm, healing small-town story, with a realistic bent. One of the protagonists has an ex-girlfriend. This is mentioned in advance, but isn’t meant as a dealbreaker. Read or don’t, as you please. “At least once in a lifetime, you should forget yourself for someone. You needn’t ask for an outcome, or to walk the same path, or even to have been together. You needn’t even ask for their love. Just meet them in the best years of your life.” Chapter 34, from Xu Zhimo. Blurb written on August 12, 2025, screenshot saved. Theme: Girls, don’t be afraid of what society thinks.