Thinking about a more modern AU.
Luo Binghe is about 14. His mother is bedbound, too sick to work, and they're too poor to get her medicine, so he's taken to- reluctantly- petty theft.
In the original plot, he'd end up stealing from someone working for Shen Qingqiu and get himself in some serious trouble for it; something that would eventually lead to Binghe somehow rising from the ashes to become the biggest crime boss in the city, country, and eventually the world.
In this timeline, he tries to pickpocket a passing stranger with glasses during a rain storm, but as he pretends to trip onto him, he sees the man's eyes go wide. Suddenly things aren't going to plan at all. The man tries to catch him, and instinctively Binghe tries to correct himself, but Binghe's momentum ends up overtaking them both and they fall onto the wet sidewalk. The man's umbrella falls off somewhere to the side.
There's groaning under him as the man tries to sit up, and then Binghe proceeds to get fussed over. He's barely managed to sit up himself before the man (introducing himself as Shen Yuan) starts patting him down and checking him over.
"You're alright? No scrapes?"
This is not how it usual goes for him. If Binghe messed up and/or missed the target, his victims tended to either scoff at him on the ground or scold him viciously. No one has ever checked him over like this before...
Shen Yuan helps him stand and, the next thing he knows, Binghe is being dragged into the nearest restaurant and sat down for an apology meal, because somehow this man- Shen Yuan- got it into his head that the whole thing was somehow his fault.
Binghe gets to eat as much as he wants.
Binghe gets to take food home. A whole meal.
Shen Yuan gives him extra cash for the trouble, as if this wasn't enough.
The poor boy ends up bursting into tears, pleadingly pushing the cash back at the man, explaining that it was all actually his fault and that he was a pickpocket. The nice man- Shen Yuan-
He still insists on Binghe taking the cash. He-...He gives Binghe his phone number and says to call him if he gets into trouble.
He gives him his umbrella and tells him to get home safe.
Shen Qingqiu, some distance away, takes off his glasses and hooks them onto his shirt. He lets out a great big sigh. Step one: Hug the Protagonist Golden Thighs has been completed!!
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