Shen Nanxing’s youth was a sealed-off hospital room. Depression was a chain wrapped around her limbs, until Jiang Yi came like a wild blaze, burning through the window lattice. During military training, he caught her when she felt faint, pressed a bottle of chilled mineral water into her hand, and smiled at her by the basketball court, his canine teeth gleaming.
She hid that brightness in a notebook worn white at the edges, counting the 137 footsteps they shared along the same route, and sketching his profile as he bent over his work in the classroom’s reflections. Her inferiority complex was a cage. She dared only to be moss growing in a gutter, gazing up at him, who belonged to the blazing sun.
But sunlight never belongs to just one person. Later, she saw Jiang Yi twist open a bottle for another girl, shield her from the crowd, and take her hand at the graduation ceremony. The last page of the diary ended on a certain rainy night, the ink blurred by tears: “So he’s the sun. He shines on everyone, but his light can never reach my rotting roots.”
Years later, at a class reunion, Jiang Yi brought his new wife to make the rounds with him and smilingly asked how she was doing. She gripped the medicine bottle in her sleeve and heard herself say, “Pretty good,” just as she had every time someone asked, “Are you okay?” Outside the window, plane tree leaves covered the steps, just like that afternoon when he waved to her. Only now, there was no young man who would turn back for her.
Highly recommended, great looking.