Seventeen, Untitled

At the opening ceremony, everyone watched as Su Chen, the school's most talked-about student, walked toward me.

“Didn't you notice you'd scraped your ankle?” He knelt and peeled open a bandage.

In a scene that sent the whole school into a frenzy, I was the only one who noticed his fingers trembling.

“Was that boy standing in the rain three years ago you?”

He lowered his eyes as he pressed the bandage on. “Yeah. The umbrella was too small, so half my shoulder got soaked.”

The dean's furious roar tore through the air: “Su Chen! Write that girl a self-criticism!”

He suddenly grabbed my wrist and pulled me through the crowd. “Now you owe me half a sky of sunshine.”

Only later did I understand that his soaked shoulder had once shielded me from all the rain in the world.