When the shadow of the sycamore trees spread across the old alley, Wu Nian always felt that he and Qi Ming could go forever.
She was the little sunshine known to the neighborhood, and she poured all her light into her heartache for him - her heartache for the shadow of her native family that could not be hidden in his eyes, her heartache for his awkward and exclusive tenderness, and her heartache for him being like a trapped beast who couldn't even learn to express love normally.
And Qi Ming, the boy who put Wu Nian into his "exclusive domain" since childhood, tied her to him in the most sinister way: he would quietly drive away her friends, he would use the cold war to force her to bow her head first, and when she wanted to share the world, he would stubbornly ask her to only look at him. He thought it was love, but he didn't know that every "possession" would leave tiny wounds on her heart.
Wu Nian accompanies him, from an ignorant boy to a young campus, teaching him how to be gentle, how to express, and how to love little by little. But when Qi Ming finally lost her sharpness and learned to replace "I want you" with "I'm afraid of losing you," her disappointment had already accumulated into a sea that she could no longer cross.
That day, Wu Nian smiled and handed him the last candy, just like he had done countless times before. Only this time, she said: "Qi Ming, I taught you how to love, but I don't want to give it to you anymore."
Later, the city was so big that they lost each other in the crowd. Qi Ming finally understood love, but lost forever the little sun that taught him to love; Wu Nian shined again with scars all over her body, but there was no longer the shadow of Qi Ming in her light. It turns out that for some stories, it's not that you don't love, but that you understand love too late, or that after you have loved, you can never go back.
