My Sunshine in the Ruins

Ning Anan grew up in an orphanage and became a nurse at a small clinic. Her luck has been bad in most of the ways a life can go wrong, and she has responded by being relentlessly cheerful about it, which the people around the clinic have come to rely on. She gives away kindness the way other people give away change. Fan Wujiu is the one person it does not reach. He was born in the slums of Cantana and raised in the tangle of that place, where staying alive meant staying alert every hour of the day, and years of that made him quiet and closed off and hard to sit next to. He decided a long time ago that he was born into hell and belongs to it. Then Ning Anan turns up in his life and does not treat him as a problem to be managed. Her softness turns out to be the only thing that gets past him, and it becomes his weak spot in a world where having one is dangerous. He becomes necessary to her in turn. The two of them keep each other upright while the circumstances that made him what he is close back in around them both.