Drowned at Eighteen

[The second button of her school uniform pressed damp patterns into her palm, just like the feelings in her diary, written over and crossed out again and again]

The promise made in the rainy alley was like a rusted pocket watch, forever stopped in the autumn when they met.

When Ying Guiwan ran toward their meeting place over a carpet of ginkgo leaves, fate had already struck a match in the shadows. The boy who taught her to shoot against the light, Lu Xizhao, vanished into the smoke of a fire like an overexposed strip of film. For ten years, she gathered every scattered clue: the bullies’ malicious snickers, the glint from Shen Moqiao’s engagement ring, a blurred silhouette in the drizzle of England. But the moment she pieced together the truth, she discovered that the cruelest scenes are always hidden beyond the viewfinder.

*Based on real events