East Facing Window

The first umbrella Xu Xingchen received in his life came from Chen An. During the midsummer rainstorm when she was fifteen years old, she hid under the eaves of the bookstore and stared at the rain curtain in a daze. Then, a simple black folding umbrella, held by a pair of clean hands, was handed to her. "Use this." The voice was as quiet and gentle as its owner. The first thing in Chen An's life that he persisted in for ten years was to send a birthday text message to Xu Xingchen. Starting from the summer when they decided to "retreat as friends" when they were eighteen years old, every year at midnight on her birthday, his text messages would arrive on time like the movement of the planets. The content changed from the cautious "Happy birthday, everything goes well" at the beginning, to the later chattering "Happy birthday, remember to eat noodles, don't stay up late, the project you mentioned last month sounds great." One of them is like a star, forever pursuing the light and freedom of the sky; the other is like dust, falling safely to the ground, providing the most solid support. Physics tells us that stars and dust come from the same source, but move in different orbits. They met briefly, bursting out the light that illuminated each other's youth, and then chose to use another kind of gravity to watch each other from a distance, forming a stable and long-lasting distance called "friends". This year, on the eve of Xu Xingchen's birthday, she was obsessed with a wedding planning project. In Chen An's cell phone, there was a text message that had been edited, deleted, deleted and edited. He knows that some blessings can always be on time, while others require a lifetime of courage to arrive.