The Wind of the Sixth Year

(Main story complete) To Wen Tang, Zhou Yan had once been the most special of her “cousin’s friends.” He helped her beat video games, handed her his umbrella on stormy days, and drew clumsy smiling faces when she failed an exam. Those moments she had dismissed as “just lending a hand” concealed the long years of waiting that had begun when he was fourteen.

It took her many years to realize that this young man, six years her senior, had already quietly become part of her life. From school uniforms to suits, from the cicadas in the old alley to the neon lights of the city, he was always there, never too close or too far, waiting for her to grow up and turn around.

Only when she finally understood the tenderness hidden in his little gestures did she realize that some companionship was never coincidence. He had spent his entire youth paving a road that would bring them together.