He Once Promised Me the Stars

He once promised her the stars

He promised to build her a library beneath the stars, so the whole world would know she deserved every bit of light in it.

Later, she found a message on his phone: “Su Nian, you’ll never measure up to her.”

The day she miscarried, he was with his first love. The day they divorced, he walked away without looking back.

She vanished from his world like a falling star. He searched for her like a madman, but by the time he found her, she no longer remembered him. Severe depression had taken her memories, along with every painful thing connected to him.

She opened a bookstore in a small town and named it “The Starry Sky Library.” He fell to his knees in front of her. She handed him a tissue and asked politely, “Sir, are you all right?”

She had forgotten the stars, the gardenias, and who he was. She only remembered that, for a while, she had been in terrible pain.

It took him ten years, but he finally built that library. She came on its opening day.

She stood beneath the skylight, sunlight spilling over her, and looked up with the faintest hint of a smile.

The man who once promised her the stars couldn’t hold on to even one.

Yet at last, she had learned to smile.