The mirrored walls of the dance studio reflected Lin Ximeng as she spun, her skirt flaring like a blazing flame. A Zhe paused with his camera in hand. The light in her eyes always made him think he had already grasped the warmth of that fire, until she calmly said, “You don’t understand.” Only then did he realize that the moments he had captured were just the tip of the iceberg. The old wounds hidden beneath her skirt and the pain she endured in the dead of night were things he had never truly touched.
As A Zhe clumsily began learning to read the weariness in her brow and the ache in her knee, Chi Jing was putting warm milk into An Ran’s hands and watching her draw crooked little dogs beside her advanced math problems. The paths of three young people crossed on a tree-lined road in autumn: Lin Ximeng gradually let down her guard in the world beyond A Zhe’s lens, A Zhe recorded the stories she never told in his sketchbook, and Chi Jing quietly watched over An Ran.
They had all been trapped in their own perspectives, thinking that love meant capturing the light or following a shadow. Then one day, they discovered that true closeness meant passing through the light and shadows to see the scars hidden in the other person’s darkness, and the flowers blooming on those scars. As the steps of dance shoes intertwined with those of canvas sneakers, and camera shutters overlapped with notes in a notebook, this coming-of-age story about understanding was only just beginning.
This little writer is really amazing