In the End, We Parted with Regrets

At twenty-eight, while moving house, Lin Zhixia unexpectedly managed to charge an old phone from ten years ago.

The moment she opened the drafts folder, she discovered that the unrequited love that had quietly come to nothing had never been a one-woman show.

Summer, 2014. The cicadas shrilled with all their might, and the sunlight was blindingly white.

Lin Zhixia thought Chen Rang's coldness meant rejection. Chen Rang thought Lin Zhixia's silence meant goodbye.

Under camphor trees less than twenty meters apart, each of them turned their burning feelings into an unsent draft, then personally snuffed out their only chance.

Later, they moved to different cities, lost touch, and became the most familiar strangers in each other's lives.

Until, ten years later, the old phone lit up. Thirty-seven unsent drafts pieced together the cruelest truth about that midsummer.

It turned out that what people called a missed connection wasn't fate playing tricks, but two cowards letting each other go.

The cicadas of that summer have long since fallen silent, but some echoes arrived a full ten years late.

When they reunited ten years later, Chen Rang, eyes red, pinned her against the wall,

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.