The Best Wine Takes Time

This is a story about "waiting". It takes ten years to brew a bottle of good wine; it also takes ten years to wait for someone. The heroine Joy spent ten years learning to make wine, but she didn't know that another person was waiting for her in the same amount of time. Li Linwei's waiting was quiet - writing letters of recommendation for her, choosing an overseas study agency for her, visiting her grandma every year and saying "I'm on my way". These details are silent, but heavier than any confession. There is no deliberate sensationalism, no ups and downs, but the daily accumulation - the water he handed over, the ribs she bit, the arm that was numb at night but did not move away - gradually added up to the thickness. When Joey finally opened the photo album and found that she had been loved for ten years but had never noticed it, she was silent. Waiting is not just the passage of time, but also someone doing many things for you that you never asked for, somewhere you don't know. And when he did these things, he never intended to let you know. This is probably the best kind of love - he doesn't need you to repay him, he just wants you to go where he wants you to go.

Every step he took was calculated, but each step had only one purpose - to make her feel at ease. He uses rationality to package feelings (scoring standards, marriage agreement), gives her a way out (the agreement has no time limit, supplementary clauses give up 50% of the property), and uses daily details (weather forecast, car keys, coats) to make her accustomed to his existence. Her "ignorance" of him was not really invisible - it was that every time she realized "he might be looking at me", she would immediately kill that thought: "Don't be so sentimental. No one will always choose you." She buried herself in oak barrels, vineyards, and wine cellars because those things would not leave her. She developed the emotional defense of "can't believe it" due to the trauma of her original family (parents divorced, not being chosen, being sent to boarding school, father's unexpected death); He had a crush on her for ten years, and used countless "prepared for a rainy day" details to break down her defenses little by little, making her go from "not believing" to "willing to try" to "starting to believe."