I Was Twenty-Five That Year

Xie Yan left City A with a sponsorship agreement, lying to Yu Huai’an that he was “tired of it all.” He didn’t know the other man had secretly tucked a bank card loaded with 130,000 yuan into his things.

Years later, they met again. Yu Huai’an grabbed him, eyes red, and said, “You could have come to me.” Later, Xie Yan folded an old plane ticket into a boat and handed it to him. “Let me be the one who waits for you.”

On a snowy day when they were twenty-five, they finally understood the words written on the wall of that rented apartment when they were eighteen: “Love isn’t a burden. It’s when you walk toward me and the streetlights happen to come on.”