The autumn in Qinglin City is always wrapped in sticky heat, just like the air in the rental house Tian Ziqi and Xiaoqi share, there is always an unspoken heartbeat floating in the air.
When we first met on the court of an international school, she was a dashing girl wearing a PE suit playing badminton, and she was a cute girl holding lemon tea and asking for WeChat. The embarrassment of misidentifying her gender without revealing it became the beginning of the two of them "living together" - she helped her with math, she left hot porridge for her, the specially empty compartment in the middle of the wardrobe, the always warm water next to the medicine box, and even the dried camellia bookmarks were quietly inserted into each other's textbooks.
Until Tian Ziqi was sent to the "military training camp", the shadows of the iron fence and the small dark room aggravated her depression. After she came out, there was only silent testing: she hid in her room and took medicine, and she sang old songs outside the door; she was afraid of being dragged down and did not dare to speak, so she pretended not to notice the restraint.
When the diagnosis certificate for terminal gastric cancer came down, the two still tacitly avoided talking about love. She went to three stores to buy strawberry cake, and only said, "It's leftover from the cafeteria." She gave her a camellia bookmark, and only said, "I'll take a look if you want." The unspoken "I love you" in his last breath became a new scar on Tian Ziqi's wrist and an unfilled blank in his diary.
On my eighteenth birthday, the camellias in the courtyard finally bloomed. Tian Ziqi sat under the flower tree and whispered to the sunset: "Xiao Qi, I love you." The wind rolled the petals and fell on her palm, just like the bottle of lemon tea she handed to her at the court that year, with unspoken tenderness, helping her turn regrets into the courage to continue walking.
Intention: To see those souls struggling in the darkness and give them a silent understanding.