[Hospital] [Campus] [Healing] [Mutual Devotion]
The gloomy, world-weary boy x the healing, beloved girl
"In my rotting youth, you were the only brave soul who dared reach out to me."
At seventeen, Shen Yuyan slit his wrists.
The bathroom's bloodstained silence shattered when his mother burst through the door. Under the cold lights of the emergency room, he heard the doctor say, "Depression accompanied by moderate self-destructive tendencies."
Transferred schools, took time off, hospitalized: he thought that was all life had to offer, until he met that girl in the hospital ward and his life finally took a turn for the better.
Lin Youzhi received her stomach cancer diagnosis before her school enrollment notice arrived.
"It's early-stage. I'm not going to die!" she said with a grin, snatching Shen Yuyan's medical chart and drawing a Shiba Inu in a nurse's cap on the back. "Brother Yuyan, if you keep looking so gloomy, the disease will laugh at you."
The tips of her hair, scented with disinfectant, brushed his scarred wrist, like a gust of wind sweeping through and flinging open the world he had locked away.
When Shen Yuyan finally learned to say no to his bullies, Lin Youzhi was chewing her chemotherapy pills like candy, crunching away.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, trembling as he touched the back of her hand, where her IV had been placed.
The girl suddenly leaned close, her lemon-scented breath warming the tips of his ears. "If you smile, it won't hurt."
Later, a line appeared on the title page of Shen Yuyan's textbook:
"She taught me how to live. I swear I'll make sure she gets to live well."
When the world-weary begin to yearn for the morning sun, and the moon sentenced to death decides to come to him, the world finally lets slip a little tenderness.
