[One-on-one sweet romance + mutual devotion]
At the start of her first year of high school, Su Ruan's manga manuscript accidentally smacks into Lu Xingci's white shirt, and opens up the feelings the boy has hidden in his physics notebook. The blank pages are covered with drawings of her cheeks puffed out as she sneaks orange candies.
From then on, their youth is infused with the sweetness of oranges. He pretends to do his homework while counting how many times she chews her candy; she draws little orange characters in his notebook of wrong answers and writes, “Keep it up, Lu Xingci.” They steal glances on the sports field, share earphones in the library, confess their feelings on a rooftop on New Year's Eve, and always carry candy in their school uniform pockets for each other. A star-trail bookmark hides the affection they haven't put into words.
They study together and put the same university on their applications. They hold hands along the ginkgo-lined path at A University and watch the star trails stretch from their school uniforms to their graduation gowns. On graduation day, he wraps a ring in orange candy wrappers and drops to one knee. “From seventeen to twenty-two, my future has always been you.”
Their married life is wrapped up in everyday joys: he fries heart-shaped eggs, and she slips orange candies into his bag. During her pregnancy, he learns to make porridge to protect the baby; after their child is born, he sings off-key lullabies to their “Little Orange.” At kindergarten, their little one slips candy to a classmate, just like she used to. Whenever the whole family watches the stars, he always says, “Look, our family has another star.”
No melodrama, just the little moments of two people choosing each other: doodling in each other's high school notebooks, train tickets for long-distance visits in college, washing dishes side by side after marriage, and their shadows overlapping beneath the nursery light.
From school uniforms to wedding dresses, from two people to three, the best kind of love is simply this: when I walk toward you, you've already been waiting there; turning “I like you” into every ordinary day of the rest of our lives, each one dusted with sugar.
