Echoes of Late Summer

[A novel within a novel | Second-person unrequited love]

I’m an editor. By day, I revise other people’s stories; at night, I secretly write a book that belongs only to you.

In the book, I call you only “you.”

Outside it, everyone calls you A Chao.

I thought you were just too busy,

thought you just didn’t want to talk to me,

thought you were only growing distant little by little.

I wrote year after year,

waited day after day,

but never got a reply from you.

It turns out some silences

aren’t because someone doesn’t want to speak,

but because they can’t anymore.

And I will never know.

Xiaoxia

This is a story about unrequited love, growing up, and fate intertwining. Like the plants of midsummer, the protagonists search for themselves amid passion and uncertainty. The story holds regrets, but also a light that offers a way through.