Inkstone as Deep as the Sea

In the 23rd year of the Jin Dynasty, Shen Yanzhi, the eldest son of Shen in the south of the Yangtze River, accompanied his mother to the Xie Mansion in the north to celebrate his birthday. On the way, he was robbed by bandits and was rescued by Xie Yanzhi, a sixteen-year-old from the General Mansion in the north of Zhenbei. The blood-stained young man held him in his arms and said "I'll take you home", which became the starting point of their entangled life. Xie Yan hid him as his "reading companion", taught him horseback riding and archery, and accompanied him to copy books and compose music; Shen Yanzhi expressed his love with piano and painting, grinding ink and laying paper for him, hiding the traces of his heartbeat. In spring cherry blossoms and winter snow, they thought they could stay together like this until they grow old. Until Shen Yanzhi was twenty years old, his right hand shook uncontrollably and he couldn't even press his favorite strings correctly - Huntington's disease, this strange and strange disease, tore his life into pieces. Xie Yan frantically studied medicine, searched for prescriptions, and rummaged through ancient books just to find a glimmer of hope; but Shen Yanzhi desperately pushed him away when he was awake: "Don't waste your future for me." But fate was never kind, and his symptoms became worse. He began to dance out of control, talk nonsense, and even instinctively resisted when Xie Yan approached. Xie Yan knelt in front of Shen's house and begged for three days before he got the opportunity to "deliver medicine over the wall every day." He watched his lover go from thin to withered, from recognizing him to relying only on instinct, and finally understood: some love is destined to end with "protecting him until the last step." In the spring of the 29th year of the Jin Dynasty, Shen Yanzhi closed his eyes in Xie Yan's arms. That night, the plum tree was in full bloom, resembling the parallel pine branches on the hosta that Xie Yan handed him when they first met. Later, Xie Yan's life became like that of Shen Yanzhi: the small courtyard full of plum trees, the habit of studying ink for him late at night, and the silly words "I'm back" to the empty bed. It's just that no one will respond to him with a smile, There were no more hands that could catch the half piece of jade pendant he handed over. Intent: Using "inkstone" to represent love and "disease" to write fate, it tells the story of two young men's pure love that spans the secular world and life and death. Their heartbeats hidden under the status of "companion readers", their exhaustive struggle to fight against the disease, and their stubbornness to hold each other tightly even though they know the outcome, all tell: Love may not be able to defeat fate, but it can make short lives become each other's eternal light. The story is not just a tragedy, but also - even if the ending is "loss", the mornings and evenings spent together and the warmth of mutual support have long been engraved into the soul and become the answer beyond life and death.