The year Song Zhiyi left home, I was exactly eight years old. That was the first time I tasted the pain of being parted from someone while they were still alive. It was sour, tinged with bitterness, and above all, it left me helpless and lost. With tears streaming down my face, I clung to her waist, unwilling to let go. I only remember one thing she told me. I was too young to understand, but I still kept her words in my heart. She said: A woman's greatest priority may not be whom she marries, but having the ability to make herself happy, no matter whom she marries. She said she didn't have that ability, and Tang Zhenting was never the right man for her. Back then, I resented her for being selfish and shut away everything I remembered about my mother.
I had always naively believed that if I spent my whole life revolving around Duan Chengchuan and poured all my love into him, we would share a warm life together, faithful until death. Time passed. I endured the grief and regret of death, and the innocence of my youth wore away. Half a lifetime had gone by before I learned what it meant to want something I could never have, and what it meant to find that having it was worse than not having it. At last, I understood. The greatest gamble in this world is falling in love with someone, because you can never know what you'll get in return for giving them your whole heart. Just as my tangled relationship with Duan Chengchuan was a game of roulette I was destined to lose. There are only a few things in this world that truly belong to you: the tears you've shed, the wounds you've suffered, the love you've given, the illnesses you've had, the people you've lost, and the sins you've committed, along with the greed, hatred, and delusion they leave behind. Thankfully, love isn't everything. Thankfully, not everything is love.
