In the summer of 2020, Lin Yuan, a boy from Yunling, matched with Su Nian, a girl from Beiyuan, on the app “Meet.” Three years and two thousand kilometers apart, the glow of a phone hidden under the covers each night built them a castle in the air. They agreed to apply to the same city, then meet in person.
After the college entrance exams, Su Nian said, “We’re not right for each other.” Why? The distance.
Lin Yuan refused to believe it. Three months later, he boarded a train bound for Ancheng. It was the first time he saw her. On a clear day after the snow, over the course of a few days, they held hands and embraced. He told her, “Find someone who treats you well,” then took a photo of her walking away.
What followed was a long process of burning himself down and rebuilding. He poured his pain into poetry, writing, “The me who died killed the me who lived,” and, “My heart turned to ash; grass and trees took root.”
In a sentence, this is a book about:
A boy who spent three years building a castle in the air, two hours meeting someone, and all the time that remained growing himself back from the ashes.
This is not a love story. It is the full account of how someone was broken through, and how he used words to dig himself back out. Dedicated to everyone who has cried in the dead of night, then kept going when morning came.
