‘To bear the umbrella is to hold up a solitary canopy and protect a place in peace.’
When Yan Ye, covered in wounds, dragged herself in front of Lin Yukun to shield him and said those words,
Lin Yukun finally understood the weight he carried on his shoulders.
Just a few days earlier, he had been a lazy young man who didn’t want to go to work, leaning by the window and staring blankly as droplets of water formed and vanished on his fingertips. He was one of the many bathers in Jilan City.
Lin Yukun’s mind, however, was filled with a blogger known as ‘Little Ye.’ A flash of pink, and the anomaly was dead before anyone could even see how. She was an umbrella-bearer, the pinnacle of the bathers.
As a child, he had boasted that he would ‘bear the umbrella and protect his family.’ Now, he only wanted to stay in bed.
Then one casual intervention at the market broke the peace.
When Aunt Lan arrived at his door with her daughter Yan Ye, Lin Yukun realized that the girl following Aunt Lan had a closer connection to his mother than he’d ever known. And that girl was none other than the blogger ‘Little Ye’ herself.
On his first day at work, Qing from the front desk stood up for Yan Ye, Station Chief Aunt Lan placed high hopes in him, and even his good friend Gao Shuo gave him a rare thumbs-up...
All those little moments warmed his heart, but Lin Yukun still felt he wasn’t worthy of the golden umbrella-bearer badge.
It wasn’t until he lay gravely wounded on the ground, watching Yan Ye walk past him with a knife in hand, that he saw the smiling faces of everyone shining beneath the golden badge.
Give yourself a thumbs up