The Chamomile Says Nothing

In three years of marriage, Shen Yan never once told her he loved her.

He slept in the living room and never crossed a line. When she asked for a divorce, he only said, “Okay.” Even when they saw each other for the last time, he simply stood outside the civil affairs bureau and said, “Take care on your way home.”

Su Wan thought their marriage had been a cold business arrangement and that she was finally free.

Until the day Shen Yan died, when she received a letter.

It read: “Su Wan, I’ve loved you from the time I was thirteen until I turned thirty. Seventeen years in all.”

She searched through every photo album and realized there wasn’t a single picture of him from their three years of marriage. She pried open his locked drawer and found seventeen years of diaries, secretly taken photos, and stacks of love letters he’d never sent.

So that was why he bought a bunch of chamomile every week: she’d once mentioned in passing that she liked it. That was why he hid in his study to throw up during chemotherapy: he didn’t want her to see. That was why he transferred all his assets to her: he knew he was going to die.

He had loved her all his life, and she had never once truly looked at him.

The meaning of chamomile is love hidden deep in the heart.

But he would never hear her answer.