I Died in the Height of Summer, Just as I Was Saying Goodbye to Him

A Little Suck

I was Wen Zhihan's shadow for fifteen years.

From childhood spent on tiptoe, looking up at him, to a youth spent following silently behind. He was born to shine, while I was the faintest footnote beneath his brilliance: ordinary family, ordinary grades, and the only thing I could do was treat the profile he left behind as a light bestowed upon me.

I once thought love meant becoming the person he needed, even if the bullying tacitly allowed by his world pushed me into an abyss, even if I had to watch him stand beside another dazzling girl, even if I heard him say with my own ears, "Who would ever like their own shadow?"

Until, to protect that perfect world, he personally nailed me to a pillar of shame for "plagiarism."

The shadow died.

I vanished from his life for good with a carefully planned "death by drowning." Three years later, gravely ill, I quietly returned to my hometown, wanting only to make my way peacefully to the end.

But he went mad.

The man who had once treated me as if I didn't exist abandoned everything and retraced every road I had ever walked, kneeling and begging for forgiveness in the most abject way.

But it was too late.

A year after my funeral, people discovered that the once-arrogant light had gone out forever in the place farthest from me.

So being consumed by the shadow is the light's ultimate fate.

[Author's Note]

This story is pure angst for the female lead, both physically and emotionally. If that's not your thing, please don't attack me. Just quietly move on.

If anything here resembles another story, it's purely coincidence. There is no plagiarism or borrowing. There are only so many tropes in angst stories, and it's impossible not to repeat even a single one.

There's a little of the author's own shadow in this, but it's not obvious. Please don't make it personal.

Theme: The real tragedy isn't wanting something you can't have. It's spending everything to chase that light, only to realize it never illuminated the abyss inside you. True redemption begins when you turn away, and ends when you step into the quiet darkness that belongs to you.