[Possessive younger sister X gentle older brother]
Blurb:
Liang Xixi had hated Liang Lai since she was little.
She was their parents’ biological child, yet it seemed like everyone in the family naturally liked Liang Lai more.
Even though Liang Lai wasn’t their biological child, even though he had congenital heart disease.
Liang Lai was like a fragile but precious golden apple. Everyone did everything they could to cherish and support him.
Liang Xixi was left out.
She hated her parents, hated her relatives, and by extension, hated Liang Lai.
In 1998, three-year-old Liang Xixi got into an argument with six-year-old Liang Lai. She accidentally pushed him over after he had just come home from heart surgery.
Her mother locked her in a dark room for three whole days.
She begged her mother to let her out.
Six-year-old Liang Lai was small and thin, his face pale and frail like a sheet of rice paper crushed beneath a heavy inkstone.
He stood outside the door, gazing at her through a barely open crack.
In 1999, four-year-old Liang Xixi began to understand that she couldn’t push her brother over in front of their parents.
In 2002, seven-year-old Liang Xixi learned to act one way in public and another in private, to play along, and... how to use her brother precisely and expertly.
Wearing a frilly little dress, she stood on a discarded metal drum in an old warehouse and deliberately tossed her doll onto a shelf she couldn’t reach, ordering Liang Lai as if it were only natural:
“Brother, my doll’s gone.”
Liang Lai climbed up, fell, and ended up covered in injuries.
When they got home, he told their mother he’d hurt himself by tripping, and that it wasn’t his sister’s fault.
Liang Xixi did everything she could to bully Liang Lai. Liang Lai did everything he could to protect her.
In 2008, they attended the middle and high school divisions of the same school.
Liang Lai was sixteen and shot up in height. Almost overnight, he shed all the labels he’d had as a child: frail, short, a punching bag.
He was transformed into the school heartthrob, a top student, and a gentle older brother.
He carried Liang Xixi’s schoolbag,
went to parent-teacher meetings for her,
covered for her,
gave her some of his living expenses as spending money,
It was as if he wanted to give Liang Xixi, little by little, all the love everyone had shown him.
Liang Xixi accepted his protection without a second thought, and continued to hate him as always.
In 2009, the Liang family guaranteed a loan and ended up a million yuan in debt.
Their parents were busy getting divorced, and their grandparents were seriously ill in the hospital.
In the courtyard of a small rural town in summer, the two children had only each other.
For once, Liang Xixi decided to be a little nicer to Liang Lai.
They relied on their grandparents’ pensions to get by in a difficult life.
At six in the evening, they rode home on a bicycle after withdrawing the last of the money in their account from the bank in town.
The summer breeze was hot, billowing Liang Xixi’s dog-print T-shirt and Liang Lai’s white shirt.
Liang Xixi leaned against her brother’s back, wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, and spoke in a tiny voice. “Brother, a senior girl from the high school division confessed to you today.”
“Oh.” The wind stretched out his voice, too. “I turned her down.”
“No dating!” Liang Xixi pinched the flesh at his waist and stomach. He caught her hand, and she pressed her ear to his back. “Brother, your heart’s beating so fast.”
In 2012, the Liang parents abandoned the two children for good, each going off to start a new marriage.
That same year, Liang Xixi got into a university a thousand miles away with excellent grades, while Liang Lai had already chosen to attend a local university in Project 211.
It seemed as if every part of their relationship had come to rest in those endless three summer years.
Liang Xixi had spent years planning her escape, enduring it all until she finally fled the town without looking back, nearly breaking herself in the process.
Liang Lai stayed behind because of his grandfather’s illness.
But one day, as he looked through an album and turned to her page,
he remembered the warmth of her ear pressed against his back and, as if possessed, kissed the person in the photograph.
*
You refuse to believe in love. I don’t dare admit I love you. We are beasts struggling in a cage, lost souls who depend on each other.
Journey Westward with the Moon
She journeys west. I stay behind, returning to dust.
- The protagonists have no romantic feelings for each other while they are related, and they do not have sex.
- The story features a family that favors boys over girls. It has no real-life inspiration or parallels.
- The protagonists have no intimate contact before adulthood.
- Liang Lai is not genuinely loved by the Liang parents. They don’t love any of their children.
- The age gap is less than three years: two and a half years.
- The ending is open-ended or tragic.
The blurb was screenshotted on August 21, 2025.
Theme: I would rather be the moon sailing out to sea than the clouds returning to the mountains.
