Before you start reading, just to assure you, no spoilers have been included in the text below!
The novel consists of 77 chapters. I will be stating my impression based on first 35 chapters in order to explain the BG story without giving out spoilers.
My impression hence forth includes only them in their coming-off age (19-FL, 22-ML). There's 7 years time skip later on (in the nearing end, I would say) but majority of the story takes place before the 7 years time skip.
Background Story
(Timeline : before FL was born)
The ML and FL are biologically unrelated. ML is son of a friend of FL's father from hometown. After the ML's father died, FL's father adopted him and changed his surname.
(Timeline: FL - 9 years old, ML - 13/14 years old)
Conflicts arose between FL's father and mother. Just as the synopsis says, her father took away ML to a different city and her mother took care of FL. After divorce ML continued taking FL's father's surname, whereas FL took her mother's surname.
「The rainy night when she and Jin Chao parted at the age of nine was also the night that when her and Jin Chao's lives entered completely different dual tracks 」
Later on, as years passed by, their contact started reducing. At some point, they completely stopped contacting each other, when FL's father married another woman and had children. And all she was left with was memories, she missed them and hoped to talk to them, but her mother's repellance towards their contact and the fact that her father married a new family and her brother (ML) had a new sister remained a hurdle between them. She was afraid of being abandoned because her father and 'brother' (ML) had a new family.
At the age of 19, when she was preparing for her college entrance, she got to know that her mom also had foreign boyfriend and she wished to shift abroad with FL after her college entrance exam. But FL did not like her mom's boyfriend, all these factors led her to messing up her college entrance exam and she had to repeat another year. She insisted on residing in China to repeat another year, hoping to prevent her mom from going abroad, but her mom compromised by sending her to FL's dad's place to repeat another year and went abroad.
(Just to clarify, FL's mom did not abandon her, she wanted her to shift abroad too, but FL was against the idea. So her mother set condition for her to repeat another year, ace her college entrance exam and then shift abroad)
Character Sketch of main leads
「She was in the south and he was in the north. She worked hard for her studies and he struggled for survival. Her world was so simple that there was only school and home, while his world was a mess when he opened his eyes. She didn't know what else to worry about besides poor performance in the exam and not getting enough sleep, but he had already fallen into the world of coldness and cruelty, walking on thin ice, and being surrounded by enemies 」
(After moving to her father's place)
FL lived with her mother in a big city. And her father loved in comparatively smaller and underdeveloped city. So, as a person who was used to living in a city with great facilities, she had tough time adjusting to the small city. Despite moving to her father, they had been estranged for years, so she always had a sense of unfamiliarity towards her father and brother. She always felt like a guest in house and could not find a sense of belonging. Even in class she was a quiet student.
(Clarification: Fl has actually had good environment and growth in her childhood, she was loved by her parents, brother (ml) and was basically doted by everyone.)
Background
ML was a good student with amazing academic performance. But after 10 years, circumstances led to things changing for him. 10 years later, he was no longer that shining bright ideal student with ideal careers in her mind. Despite his good abilities in studies, certain incident cause him to give up on his college entrance exam, despite the promising future he once had. He still dotes on fl, but he tends to keep distance from her (probably because they have separated for years and are kinda unfamiliar with each other) and from what I understood, ML probably has hesitations in his relation with fl in the very primary stage, thanks to their different life experiences, he was afraid of showing the darkest and most painful experience of his past to her.
Tags
ML has a cold personality. He doesn't like getting close to people, but is warm and caring towards FL and takes care of her as a big brother. There are often times he teases FL.
Once again highlighting, only includes impression in primary chapters of their age 19, I haven't included anything about their feelings development stage (when they start understanding each other's experience during this 10 years when they weren't part of each other's life) or much about their romance line, the story also has 7 years time skip in the latter chapters.
