Summer in the old town is always filled with the chirping of cicadas and the smell of old times. Wen Zhixia's days were marked by her mother's white school uniform, the lingering nagging relatives in the tube building, and the low self-esteem hidden in her notebook that she didn't even dare to mention in the evening breeze - she felt like the moss in the corner, only worthy of curling up in the shadows until she ran into Jiang Xubai's gaze.
He was the kind of boy who stood in the light, with a clean white shirt, and sharp fingertips when solving math problems. But he always brought warmth to her in the most inadvertent way when she was in a panic: helping her fix her squeaky bicycle, giving her half of the mung bean soup made by her grandmother, and quietly standing as a shadow behind her when she was being made difficult by her relatives.
"You don't have to hide." He looked at her red eyes under the eaves on a rainy day, and his voice was softer than the rain. "I like your mother's tenacity, the poem you hid on the back of the draft paper, and even the way you clenched your fists when you were bullied."
It turns out that liking someone never requires perfection from the other person. It was he who saw through all her wrinkles, but still felt that her wrinkled appearance was like the sweetest mouthful of watermelon in summer; it was she who finally dared to look up and found that he had quietly planted sunflowers in her shadow.
This is a story about summer, growth and redemption. Two imperfect boys and girls, under the old locust tree, dismantled each other's shells of inferiority, and lived their lives into poetry - it turns out that the best time is when you look at me, the light in your eyes is brighter than the sunset.
