After Ten Years of Secret Love, I Lured My Older Sister into My Arms

[Two female leads + secret love + age gap + happy ending]

[Devoted, obsessive young genius + rational, gentle older woman]

On my twenty-first birthday, I drank too much and grabbed Jiang Wan’s hand. “Jiang Wan, I like you.”

She pulled her hand away, her voice soft. “Zhiqiu, I’m ten years older than you.”

“Age doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” She turned away. “I can’t watch you waste the best years of your life on someone whose youth is almost gone.”

I went abroad. Two years, more than seven hundred days.

When I came back, I “ran into” her at the bookstore she often visited. She was leafing through a music theory book.

“Teacher Jiang,” I called.

She looked up and froze for a moment. “…Zhiqiu. You’ve grown up.”

My friends always scolded me for being a coward. I told them they didn’t understand.

On her thirty-fourth birthday, I gave her a USB drive.

“There are 109 songs on it, from when I was fourteen to when I was twenty-four. They’re all for you.”

She didn’t take it. She only looked at me. “I might have gray hair next year.”

“Then I’ll dye it starlight gray,” I said. “Jiang Wan, I love you, not some particular version of you at a certain age.”

She cried. Her tears fell onto the back of my hand, burning hot.

Later, she grew fond of the folder named “Evening Breeze,” and listened to the song Sonnet.

“Did you really write this when you were fourteen?”

“Yeah.” I wrapped my arms around her from behind and rested my chin in the hollow of her shoulder. “That day, you were teaching me a physics problem, and you were so close I could smell your hair. I went home and wrote this song. My heart was beating so fast I got several notes wrong.”

Ten years of secret love had been like a long, slow tide. At last, I had reached the shore that was meant for me.