Su Xingluo and Lu Zhinan grew up across the street from each other, childhood sweethearts from the days of playing around in split-crotch pants to sitting side by side in their senior year of high school. The bond everyone envied had quietly turned into something more in both their hearts. Amid the cicadas’ summer chorus, he took care of all her little errands, calling it “no trouble,” while she hid the tenderness she had held onto for so long behind a casual “while I’m at it.” After the college entrance exams put distance between them, he used “I was just passing by” as an excuse to meet her, and she quietly waited for him to come home.
From tentative first steps to wholehearted commitment, from school uniforms to a wedding dress, theirs was a promise without melodramatic misunderstandings, only countless little moments of warmth: him abandoning a competition to help her at the school sports meet, their flustered handholding on New Year’s Eve, keeping each other company under the glow of their graduate exam study lamps, and a promise of forever in a quiet alley.
This is a chronicle of youth between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, recording two young people’s mutual secret love and growth together, until the happiness of “I’m so glad it was you” settles into every tender moment.
