The Fish Waits for No One

I died in the year Song Qichi loved me most.

When I was fifteen, he saved me from taking my own life on a rooftop by giving me a math problem. He became the only light in my dark life.

We spent ten years entangled in a love that cut to the bone, but it lost to the gulf between our worlds. The role I was given was to take the money and leave, to tell the lie that it was “for his own good.”

I signed the agreement and left for a distant place, thinking that was the end of the story.

Only at the end of my life did he rush into my hospital room with red-rimmed eyes and discover the secret I had hidden.

I had already exceeded every impossible requirement in that agreement. The last page read: “I am finally worthy of you, but fate won’t allow it.”

Song Qichi, by dying, I finally won your eternal remembrance.