Stardrop Lane

From the glass marbles they played with in Starry Sky Alley at age six, Jiang Yanli and Lin Wanxing used butterflies as their letters and formulas as their vows. For ten years, they secretly loved each other and protected one another from a distance. He drew functions on cups of hot cocoa from the convenience store to hide his feelings; she used her illustration earnings to help cover his debts. The “LX=∞” on their college entrance exam paper and their interlaced fingers in the graduation photo were confessions they never spoke aloud.

When they lived apart, he carved coordinates into wooden plaques, while she founded a butterfly club. They struggled with giving up on graduate school under the pressure of reality, and exchanged love letters through an iron gate, turning 1,200 kilometers into a path that kept their hearts in sync.

After they married, a sea of butterfly lights illuminated the anniversary of their first meeting, and the butterfly-shaped glow of an ultrasound scan heralded new life. The twin trees that began as saplings planted for their wishes grew into markers of time for three generations.

In old age, the moonlight turned the leaves beneath the trees into the butterflies they had drawn as children. At last, they understood: love is a pair of twin trees planted with their own hands, their roots entwined and branches touching, growing eternally through the years.