Ode to Falling Stardust

Su Nianxia, now eighty years old, ran her trembling fingers gently over the name on the gravestone, a name that had never grown old: Lu Yuanhang. She opened the diary that had been with her for sixty years. A faded high school graduation photo slipped from its yellowing pages. On the back, it said: “I wish I could be your stardust, shining forever.” In the summer of 2003, transfer student Lu Yuanhang knocked over Su Nianxia’s easel, and stumbled into her life. He was a genius from the science track, yet he was always sneaking into the art room to watch her paint. She dreamed of becoming an artist, but after he said, “I want to find a way to cure rare diseases,” she secretly applied to medical school. They made a promise: she would paint all the beauty in the world, and he would save lives. But fate bared its fangs just before graduation. When an out-of-control truck hurtled toward Su Nianxia as she crossed the road, Lu Yuanhang used all his strength to shove her out of the way. As he lay dying, he pressed his bloodstained research notes into her hands. His lips moved as he spoke his final words: “Live on… and see that future for me…” After that, Su Nianxia never picked up a paintbrush again. Over ten years, she went from medical student to CEO of a biotech company, completing the research Lu Yuanhang had left unfinished. The day Yuanhang Medical went public, she went alone to his grave and placed the first new cancer drug in front of the headstone. “Look, we changed the future.” Now, her hair white with age, she leaned against the cold gravestone and closed her diary for the last time. Through the haze, she seemed to see the seventeen-year-old boy reaching out to her beneath the cherry blossoms once more. “Nianxia, this time, let me take you to see the stars.”