The novella Ton temps hors d'atteinte offers to readers a surprising love story, considered over a long period of time, from childhood to adulthood. Written in an original way by a “me” (the narrator) addressing a “you” (the loved one), it tells the story of two beings as different from each other as they are from those around them, constantly playing on contrast and shift, concepts brilliantly embodied in the narration of the different times to which the two protagonists belong. Ending in a sort of tragic road trip like "Bonnie and Clyde", the novella unfolds patiently and subtly, according to the protagonist's different memories. The science fiction element of the novella only really reveals itself in the last part of the text, evoking other works by Xia Jia: a subtle, unspectacular innovation but which suggests the possibility of an inventive technology in the service of human rather than destructive and threatening. It is in this combination of romance and science fiction, both delicately brought together, that the success of the text is undoubtedly found. As Xia Jia herself mentions in her collection of short stories: “The most beautiful science fiction stories are not so different from the story of first love.”