What Remains After the Fire

Once, Shen Weiyang pinned me against the bathroom wall and slapped me, asking if I’d learned my lesson.

I said nothing.

Later, at the gates of A University, that aloof young man stopped me, his eyes red and his voice trembling. “I’ve waited for you for three years.”

I looked at him and asked softly, “Do you know what’s left after the flames?”

It’s the ashes left behind after something burns. They’ll never catch fire again.

But he doesn’t know this:

On the day I was bullied the worst, the person who’d been by my side since our days at the orphanage skipped class for the first time and got into a fight for the first time, all for me.

Some love has yet to be spoken.

And there are people I still don’t know how to answer.