It's Been So Long

Mutual pining

Jiang Zhou.

Those are the two words Su Yu least wants to remember.

He is the golden boy everyone adores, brilliant and wonderful.

He is a beam of light beyond the borders of her world, visible but out of reach.

And she can only watch his back from far away, always separated from him by a crowd.

On graduation day, she wants to be brave for once.

But even Heaven refuses to help her.

The love letter she'd rewritten countless times vanishes at the very last moment, before she can send it.

She doesn't have the courage to write a second one.

From then on, their paths run parallel, with no chance of crossing again.

*

Jiang Zhou's life is all rules.

Until one day, a figure walks into his world.

Whenever his gaze passes over her, she turns her head first.

She seems to hate him.

And the only rule he ever broke was for her.

That day, she cried, heartbroken.

Yet he still stooped to keeping the love letter for himself, reading it over and over on every sleepless night. He knows how despicable he is.

The year they graduated, he came to her school again.

The auditorium glittered with light. He sat in the most inconspicuous corner of the audience.

He watched her host onstage, bright and lively, shining brilliantly, with nothing to do with him.

"Goodbye, Su Yu."

On his phone screen was an apology message he'd drafted.

He would keep that shameful love hidden in his heart forever.

As the event ended, his finger hovered over the send button.

At the very moment he was about to press it, a cheerful young man approached her with flowers, and the people around them began to cheer.

A smile he'd never seen before bloomed on her lips.

The name that had turned over in his heart a thousand times escaped him uncontrollably:

"Su Yu."

[Pride insists on reading all that pent-up longing as goodbye.]

Blurb written on March 1, 2026.

Theme: Don't let the one you love slip away.