“You are the secret I’ve woven into my poems for eleven years, and the name I spent my youth too afraid to say aloud.”
In her final year of high school, Su Nian had two secrets:
First, she was the mysterious poet whose pen name, “Niannian,” appeared in the school magazine.
Second, she had been secretly in love with the school heartthrob, Zhou Ran, for three whole years.
She thought her grand, unrequited love would never be returned, until one rainy day, Zhou Ran pointed to a poem she had written in the school magazine and said softly, “Whoever wrote this must really understand what true tenderness is.”
Eight years later, at a class reunion, Su Nian, now a columnist, meets Zhou Ran again. In the karaoke room, he reads aloud in front of everyone the farewell poem she wrote at graduation:
“You were the light I couldn’t bring myself to touch throughout my youth.”
As he reaches the last line, he looks up at her, his gaze burning:
“I’ve kept this poem safe for eight years.”
It turns out he understood the feelings hidden between her lines long ago.
It turns out those seemingly chance encounters were all deliberate.
It turns out what she thought was a solo performance was really two people choosing each other all along.
“From school uniforms to wedding gowns, from lines of poetry to vows.”
“The most beautiful kind of love is when you finally gather the courage to run toward someone, only to discover they’ve been waiting for you at the finish line for years.”
