Seventeen, Snow on the Locust Trees

My name is Jiang Shiqi. My brother gave it to me.

My brother always saved the last bite of flatbread and the sweetest candy for me. Even when his hands shook from pain as he looked for work with an injury, he would smile and say it didn’t hurt. The clatter of the abacus in the cloth shop hid all his hard work, but I was always letting him down by fainting, making him set down his ledger and rush home again and again.

Brother, this time, Shiqi really has found snow that will never melt.