A Breeze from the South

[A 2016 Outstanding Original Online Literary Work of Beijing] Only later did I realize that, as the green hills faded into dusk and morning glories turned to snow, all I wanted was to sit with you and comb our graying hair, with the southern wind at our backs. Dedicated to all the friends who have loved, been hurt, and still dare to love again. No one had any faith in the marriage between Xu Zinan and Yan Muqing. There were three reasons: 1. Yan Muqing was thirty-two, and Xu Zinan was twenty-two. They had the proverbial generation gap. 2. Yan Muqing was cold and ruthless to the extreme. He would never fall in love with a woman he had met only once, and she would only end up disappointed. 3. A thirty-two-year-old man must have had countless women before her, and there would be plenty after her too. Old flames and new romances would follow one after another, and she would never know a moment's peace. These three reasons were like a curse, but Xu Zinan married him anyway, after meeting him just once. About the generation gap: "Brother Yan..." "Hmm? What did you call me?" "Uncle... Uncle Yan?" "...Brother is fine..." "Brother Yan, I'm off to paint. I have a nude life-drawing session with a male model today." "Nude? Life drawing? Wait! ...What if I model for you?" "Sure! Sit still, Brother Yan!" "That's it? Don't I need to... take my clothes off?" "...Brother Yan, what are you thinking?" As for love, she had never expected it, so how could she be disappointed? Yet he was the one who braved a typhoon to pick her up in a storm. He was the one who brought her ice cream on a sweltering summer day. He was the one who blew out the candles with her on her birthday. Just as her heart began to melt like ice cream, the third curse finally came true... She finally understood what a man's tenderness and affection meant: they weren't love. And she finally learned what Yan Muqing's coldness and ruthlessness meant, too. "Yan Muqing, why did you marry me? Just because my name has the character Nan in it?" He answered with silence... It was a long, long time before she realized that nothing she had seen or heard was true. The truth was more terrifying than she could have imagined... (A temporary blurb for auspicious new project. I'm putting this here for now, and will officially update it in July. Dear readers, please let auspicious come back and revise the blurb later~)