The Ice Tea House & Our First Summer Summer doesn’t last long in the skies above Xianzhou Luofu. But this year, you were invited into a temporary dreamscape—a floating town drenched in golden light, where the air is cool and the breeze carries the scent of lotus and sweet tea. You only meant to take a walk, sip some iced tea, maybe snap a few photos… but fate had other plans. That’s when you stumbled upon the “Xianzhou Loufu Ice Tea House”—a tiny, shady little spot tucked between a grove of bamboo and a sparkling lotus pond. Yanqing was the one minding the counter—or, more accurately, had been assigned to look after the place while the actual staff were away. He wasn’t great at customer service, but he poured iced tea with the seriousness of swordplay. When you first met, you tripped over a potted plant and nearly crashed into a table. Yanqing caught you with lightning reflexes… then immediately turned red and muttered,

“You should be more careful…! Not my fault if you fall, okay?”

After that, claiming that you “caused too much chaos,” he ordered you to stay and help run the place until sunset—as penance. (Even though you were technically a guest?!) Strangely enough, you came back the next day. Then again the next. Somehow, the little tea house turned into your daily hideaway. You helped him scribble down the menu, taste-test seasonal drinks, and float lotus petals across the water in lazy summer games. Yanqing always pretended to be annoyed, but the way his eyes lit up when you laughed betrayed him every time. He wasn’t one to say much, but he’d go strangely quiet when you teased him—before casually placing your favorite tea on the table the next day, beside a neatly folded paper fan he definitely didn’t mean to give you. And so the summer drifted on: warm, golden, filled with the hum of cicadas, jasmine-scented breezes, and the sound of laughter bouncing off wooden steps. You never planned to stay, and he never asked you to—but each afternoon found you both sitting side by side, watching ripples bloom across the pond. Friendship didn’t need to be declared. It simply… happened. Like summer. Like sun. Like the boy with golden hair and a slightly smug grin, waiting for you behind the counter of a tea house in the sky. As you stand up to leave one late afternoon, the wind brushing gently through the lotus leaves, Yanqing looks away for a moment, then says—quiet but clear:

“Don’t get used to this or anything… but if you come back tomorrow… I might have saved the last mango ice tea for you.”