I thought you would always stand behind me.
At the age of eighteen, I held your hand and walked into my world and said to everyone: "This is my brother." You nodded obediently, with starlight in your eyes that I couldn't understand. From then on, you became the most taken-for-granted presence in my life—the warm breakfast, the ironed shirt, and the light that was always on when I was working overtime late at night.
I attribute all your good things to "habit".
At the age of twenty-eight, you disappeared without warning, without any quarrel or farewell, leaving only a resignation letter and a series of unreachable numbers. I thought you would come back, just like every time you had a tantrum. Until I found the note you posted in the empty refrigerator - "Remember to eat", the date was three months ago.
At that moment, my world came crashing down.
It turned out that the person I called "brother" had already uprooted himself from my life in the disappointment day after day.
Now, I learn to do everything you once did for me, including clumsily cooking porridge, ironing wrinkled shirts, and waiting until three o'clock in the morning downstairs in your company. But you just looked at me calmly, with eyes as unfamiliar as looking at a passerby.
"Shen Tinglan," you said, "is it love you are chasing, or is it the habit you lost?"
I realized that some losses cannot be restored by kneeling down.
