[Coming of age + bittersweet unrequited love + BE aesthetics] “Do you regret it, you coward who only dared to love them in secret?” Popular author Shi Qingyao returns with another aching tale of unrequited love after You Broke Your Promise! In everyone's eyes, childhood friends Ren Yusu and Jiang Ruan were bound to go from bickering to becoming a couple. Ren Yusu thought so too at first, but he forgot that stories can take more than one path, and that a childhood friend can still lose to someone who arrives later. On Jiang Ruan's eighteenth birthday, Ren Yusu hurried over with a bouquet of roses. He had been preparing for this day for a long time: a garden full of roses was his coming-of-age gift to Jiang Ruan. Delighted, he placed the bouquet in her hands and was about to invite her to see the garden when he heard her laughing with a friend:
“Roses used to be my favorite flower.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“My favorite now is lisianthus.”
