Lin Zigui is forty-two, unmarried, and a high school Chinese teacher.
Many people have loved her: her university senior Gu Buyi, her classmate Zhang Heley, her former colleague Yu Ye, and her blind date Liu Nanyou. Her middle school classmate Lin Zhengxi has secretly loved her for thirty years, since middle school, but has never told her.
She has loved many people too. She had a crush on Zhou Siyu for over a decade and wrote him a letter she never sent. She was with Zou Wang for ten years. He stood outside her door and knocked for ten years, but never came in.
She fell ill. Depression. She couldn't eat or sleep, and when she stood at the lectern, she couldn't say a single word.
She quit her job and returned to her hometown. Her father, Lin Zhide, played the harmonica in the courtyard. Her mother, Su Jinxiu, steamed crystal taro cakes. Chunxi rode over on her electric scooter to scold her.
"Go ahead and cry. I'm not leaving."
It took her ten years to learn one thing:
You don't have to forgive. He didn't wrong me. He simply couldn't do it. I didn't wrong him either. I just couldn't keep waiting.
Of all people, it had to be you. Of all people, it had to be me.
Of all lives, ours had to go so wrong in just the right way. Come back, come back. Whatever you've lost, it doesn't matter. I'll love you.
