Every frame of their story is immersed in the soft light of April - seventeen-year-old Jiang Qu turned around amid the flying cherry blossoms, and the blood droplets oozing out from the back of his hand were brighter than the petals, while Natsume Shigeru saw through the thin powder the shape of all his thoughts for the next six years.
Later, time crushed them into two faded specimens: one was Natsume Shigeru's school uniform button hidden in an iron box, with its edges oxidized to a bitter brown color; the other was the cherry blossom brooch on Jiang Qu's white coat that would never be replaced, its petals made of the cold, hard light of medical stainless steel.
During those years, Natsume Shigeru used a knife to prove his existence in the studio, and the blood beads condensed into scabs on his wrists; Jiang Qu drew thousands of cherry blossoms on the medical records, and the force of the pen tip cutting through the paper was like dissecting his own wounds that had never healed.
It was not until six years later that the hospital's fluorescent lights illuminated the reunion as a slow clinical operation - Natsume Shigeru's veins were filled with hereditary prophecies, and Jiang Qu's stethoscope finally heard the deafening silence that had been hidden for too long.
In the ward at three o'clock in the morning, when the glucose in the infusion tube dripped for the 137th time, their eyes once again reflected each other's appearance: the memory smelled of disinfectant, bergamot and rust, like two ancient porcelain being repaired gently colliding in the dark, making a complete shattering sound that only each other could hear.
It turns out that all partings are long consultations, and falling in love is finally handing over the blood sample report of the seventeen-year-old abrasion - at the most fragile point in life, they understand the tender and stubborn pathology that the other party has hidden for half their lives.
Intention: love and future.
