A chance mishap along A University’s cherry-blossom avenue sends Su Ruan, a sweet, softhearted art student, crashing into the world of Lu Xingyan, a physics prodigy. Titanium white paint leaves the imprint of her palm on his dark hoodie, and a notebook picked up by mistake becomes the beginning of their romance. Only later does she learn that the light always shining late into the night from the balcony across from hers is there because he doesn’t want her to feel lonely while working on her drawings. The hand that quietly helps her gather her scattered papers on the library rooftop hides a tenderness he can’t bring himself to confess. Even the anonymous hand warmer left on her desk during her period is his clumsy way of showing he cares.
Lu Xingyan’s icy composure crumbles completely around Su Ruan. He stays up with her until the early hours as she revises her artwork, and uses physics formulas to help her analyze light and shadow. When they’re sketching in an old town, he carries her down the whole stone-paved street, saying, “A vampire is protecting her little ghost.” And at the campus sports meet, he rushes onto the field and announces in front of the whole school, “This is my girlfriend.” Su Ruan’s sketchbook, meanwhile, holds a hundred portraits of him in profile: beneath the sunset on the rooftop, under the lab lights, and gazing at the stars with her. Every stroke reveals feelings she can’t hide.
There are no melodramatic misunderstandings, only two people choosing each other with tenderness. From a viral post on the campus forum showing them together to tomato-and-egg stir-fry in their little apartment, from thanking each other at the competition awards ceremony to a proposal on the cherry-blossom avenue, they use their whole youth to prove that the best kind of love is when a softhearted girl’s paintbrush collides with the light of a cool, distant star: you chase your dreams with me, and I’ll help you hold on to your tenderness. From now on, every page of the rest of our lives will have “us” written on it.
