A modern romance about twelve years of devoted waiting, growing together, and finding love again after a breakup, though not in the conventional sense. At its heart, it explores equality, trust, the meaning of personal transformation over time, and the timeless belief that true love can span the years and overcome barriers of status.
The story begins on a summer day at school, twelve years ago. Fourteen-year-old Shi Muqiu is left with a spinal cord injury after a car accident, confined to a wheelchair and withdrawn and sensitive. Xu Niannian, a girl who has just transferred to his school, enters his world with her trademark candor and regard for him as an equal. She always crouches down to meet his eyes, stands up for him when others gossip, and gives him wholehearted faith and encouragement when he reveals his astonishing dream of “building myself a pair of legs.” “When you stand up one day, remember to treat me to a meal!” Her sunshine-like warmth and their innocent promise of becoming “a nurse and a leg-building engineer” become the only light in Shi Muqiu’s black-and-white world, and the starting point of his lifelong struggle. But just before graduation, Xu Niannian transfers schools for family reasons. They part in a hurry before either can confess their feelings, leaving behind only a notebook with a drawing of a “standing little person” as a keepsake.
