The sun was bright the first time Xu Chengxuan saw Gu Zhuoyu. He looked like someone, someone who had disappeared. So when Gu Zhuoyu smiled at him, all Xu Chengxuan said was, “You disgust me. Stay away.”
But Gu Zhuoyu didn’t stay away. Like a man with no sense of boundaries, he gradually worked his way into Xu Chengxuan’s life: the hospital, the classroom, evening study sessions, the rain. Everyone said Gu Zhuoyu was gentle, proper, and perfect. Only Xu Chengxuan saw the cracks beneath that perfect exterior.
“Xu Chengxuan, what if we stayed tangled up with each other for the rest of our lives?”
Xu Chengxuan didn’t answer. He tried to ignore him, push him away, and give him the cold shoulder, but every time he turned around, Gu Zhuoyu was there. Then one day he realized that Gu Zhuoyu’s persistence wasn’t accidental. He had known all along who Xu Chengxuan resembled. He had known about Xu Chengxuan’s past. He had been waiting for an answer all this time.
And Xu Chengxuan himself still wasn’t ready to face that answer.
While everyone else thought Gu Zhuoyu was taking revenge on him, only Gu Zhuoyu knew that he was trying to get close to someone in the clumsiest way possible. The love letters, the tears, the moments he lost control, and the embrace from behind: these were the only language he knew.
It wasn’t until summer was almost over that Xu Chengxuan realized the thing he had kept pushing away was the closeness he was most afraid to admit he wanted.
