A story of mutual healing | Age gap [Please add to your collection (´∀`)]
Blurb:
It began as a planned sponsorship, though at first, she didn't know that.
At twelve, she saw a young man climb the low, lonely hill in their village for the first time.
After he left, she returned to the little classroom, pulled back from the brink of dropping out of school.
At eighteen, she got into Guangnan University and traveled south alone, her bags on her back.
After enrolling, she called him Professor Liang.
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Years later, she disguised herself, still timid as ever.
One morning in the library, he saw through her disguise and asked if she remembered him. They had met before.
Her tightly clutched books betrayed her feelings. The words "paid in advance" gave her the peace of mind to accept his help.
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On many a night after becoming a star in the music industry, Mai Qing would wonder what Liang Zhongrun meant to her. Was he the person who had sponsored her for ten years? The Professor Liang who cared about her? Or the unresolved regret she had carried in her heart for so long?
He was a star, bright and impossibly far away, whose radiance made her feel small.
Even when she spoke without thinking, he never lost sight of who he was.
Later, when they met again in a hospital corridor, one look was enough for her to understand: she had never forgotten him.
"I used to hope I could become someone who didn't have to worry about putting bread on the table. Then I could be a little braver and reach for the stars."
A resilient, self-reliant musical prodigy who rises out of the countryside x a kind, gentle mathematics professor haunted by his past
Reader's guide:
1. The leads have a nine-year age gap. Please take note if this bothers you.
2. The story before and around the heroine's college years is told in flashbacks. The present-day storyline begins after the psychiatry arc.
3. Both leads are devoted only to each other. This is a one-on-one romance, with both of them saving each other.
4. The story focuses on youth, campus life, and urban romance, with some entertainment-industry elements.
5. There is no romance between the leads while the heroine is underage. They meet at the same university after she enrolls, and only then do they begin running into each other frequently. While she is his student and he is sponsoring her, his principles would never allow them to be together.
6. The heroine is no helpless damsel. She is self-reliant, transforming from an ugly duckling into a swan. To be clear, the heroine is not put through hardship for the sake of it. Her confusion and struggles are a necessary part of fighting her way up from her family circumstances. Her hardships have nothing to do with the hero, were not caused by him, and are not the main focus of the novel.
7. The heroine isn't perfect. She has her own fears and uncertainties.
8. I recommend reading it through once, then reading it again while listening to the male-vocal version of "Last Night's Wind, Tonight's Moon."
A line from a film:
"She did not want to become like our mothers. The neighbors and relatives seemed to have lost their feminine features. They had been eaten away by their husbands' bodies, their fathers and brothers, and the sprawling roots of their families." Lenu, from My Brilliant Friend
The quotation relates to the later plot and themes of this novel.
Its meaning: She did not want to become like our mothers, the neighbors, or the relatives. Their bodies had been worn down, their forms increasingly resembling their husbands, then used by their fathers and brothers, until they were swallowed up in the vast, tangled roots of their families.
◎ Not a formulaic story
Theme: Bread to satisfy hunger, stars to show the way.
