If Youth Faded

Su Jinxue17K Novel Network

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Word count
6.2K words

Tags

Girls' Fiction Contemporary Romance Entertainment CircleSocializingTalent ShowUrban RomanceYouth CampusSecret CrushChildhood SweetheartsComing of AgeLighthearted Slice

Summary

Tea Ling, a teenage girl with social anxiety, has long been compared by her parents to her childhood friend Yi Yangqianxi. Determined to stop hiding behind others, she uses her friend Ma Xinyu's connections to join the production team of The Coming One as a temporary makeup artist, hoping to observe artists at close range and figure out where she should stand beside the boy she likes. Nervous and uneasy on her first day in the makeup room, she suffers the cold shoulder of team leader Gu Xiang, yet gradually relaxes as she gets to know contestants Liao Juntao, Mao Buyi, Zhong Yixuan, Zhou Zhennan, Meng Zikun, and others, making more friends along the way. Outside of work, her daily conversations and interactions with Qianxi carry an undercurrent of ambiguity, and the two even adopt a cat together. With a lighthearted tone, the story unfolds her growth and youthful stirrings behind the stage.

Editor's review

An urban romance centered on youthful growth and secret crush, whose appeal lies in the backstage daily life of a talent show in the makeup room and the heroine's small steps in overcoming social anxiety; her bickering with the childhood-sweetheart male lead is light and likable, and the supporting cast is vivid. Suitable for readers who like idol talent-show backgrounds and daily sweet stories. Weaknesses: the opening is loosely paced, the makeup-artist identity is only lightly woven into the plot, and the romance line early on relies on dialogue and hints, so readers wanting strong conflict may find it flat.

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Reading tips

  1. Finish the first few chapters of Cha Ling joining the production team to understand her motive for becoming a makeup artist before moving into character interactions
  2. Pay attention to her conversations with Yi Yangqianxi and the flashback interludes; the hidden threads are in the details
  3. Read the supporting characters' talent-show arcs as ensemble extras to better feel the backstage atmosphere

About the publisher

17K Novel Network

17K Novel Network (17K小说网) is a publishing platform centred on online literature, with 10,912 titles in its catalogue; publicly available information is limited, and its founding background and country or region are not confirmed. Judging from the existing titles, its publishing scope covers common categories such as male-oriented fiction, Eastern fantasy, urban fiction, female-oriented fiction, time-travel and alternate-history stories, and selected fiction, spanning male-oriented cultivation and urban-life themes as well as female-oriented time-travel and quick-transmigration narratives. Representative titles include Deities: Recruiting Earth Players from the Start, Rebirth of the Nine-Tailed Superstar, Quick Transmigration: When a Max-Level Boss Becomes a Toxic Dad, Supreme Pill King, My Beautiful Wife, Chaos Tang, Wind Howling through the Jianghu, and Great Qin: My Inner Thoughts Overheard by the Ancestral Dragon from the Start, most of which unfold with the length and pacing of online serialization. Representative authors include Yang Zhizhi, Yuyi Tingbing, Xuanyuan Lvedan, Zhenyong, Manyu, Wuweijiu, Meng Qingxuan and Tianyan Junran, reflecting a publishing approach built on contracted online authors and organized by genre.

FAQ

Is this book the love story of Cha Ling and Yi Yangqianxi? Early on it focuses on Cha Ling's growth as a makeup artist and her secret crush; the romance is daily and understated, not just a love story.
Can I understand it without having seen the talent show? Yes. The show background is only a stage; the focus is on character interactions and the heroine's changing mindset.
Is the heroine's social anxiety important? Yes. She joins the production team precisely to overcome social anxiety and find her place; it's the main growth line of the book.

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About the author

Su Jinxue Author

Su Jinxue (Chinese: 夙瑾雪) is the author's Chinese name, with Su Jinxue as the English rendering. Her nationality, dates of birth and death, and other personal details are not clearly recorded in publicly available sources, and the information currently confirmed is quite limited. Only one work by her is included in the library, namely If Youth Faded, which is commonly categorized as a girls' novel and modern romance. Judging from this work and its classification, her writing tends to center on youth and emotion, addresses female readers as its main audience, and pays attention to emotional ups and downs and character relationships during the process of growing up. Because more biographical material is lacking, a full picture of her writing, the specific features of her style, and her position within genre writing are difficult to assess adequately; readers can only sense her narrative orientation and manner of emotional expression in youth romance through this representative work. The title If Youth Faded itself carries a tone of hypothesis and remembrance, suggesting that the work may involve looking back on and reflecting upon time gone by. Given the limited material, a cautious description of the author and her writing is perhaps more appropriate than excessive inference.