A frail, cool man x a gentle little ray of sunshine
Lu Zhi transmigrated back ten years and met Shen Qingheng at seventeen.
Back then, he had refined features, but a terminal illness had reduced him to skin and bones. The doctors said he wouldn't survive the winter snow.
Clutching the crumpled wish list in her pocket, she accompanied him to see the Northern Lights spread across the sky over Mohe, listen to the ceaseless waves rolling around Gulangyu Island, and climb Mount Tai, which he'd talked about for half his life.
The wind on the summit blew so hard it was impossible to keep one's eyes open. His lips had turned purple from the cold, but he stubbornly took Lu Zhi's hand. His fingertips were icy, yet his voice held the unique stubbornness of a boy.
He said, “Lu Zhi, wait for me. I'll see you in the future.”
--
“To us.”
The soda fizz burst on their tongues, bringing a cool, sweet sensation. Sitting side by side on the beach, the two watched the last glimmer of sunset disappear on the horizon and the stars climb one by one into the ink-dark sky screen.
And those words, “to us,” seemed at that moment to cross time and space as well...
Amid the sound of the waves, he suddenly began humming softly. The melody was gentle, a tune Lu Zhi had never heard before.
In the end, she didn't ask what the song was called. She simply listened quietly, hearing the waves and his singing mingle together, and listening to her heartbeat grow clearer with every beat.
“I want to say, Shen Qingheng, meeting you is the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me.”
“I want to say that if you can live, I want to see every beautiful sight in the world with you.”
“I want to say that I think... I've fallen for you.”
Those words seemed about to spill out in an instant...
But in the end, Lu Zhi merely smiled, lifted the soda can in her hand, and gently clinked it against his. “To the waves, to the sunset, to us.”
Shen Qingheng was taken aback too, then curled his lips into a smile, his eyes filled with nothing but warmth.
[OS: The pacing in the early chapters may speed up and slow down, since this was originally written as a short story and I'm now expanding it directly. I'm having trouble figuring out how much to change each chapter. I'm very sorry if the pacing doesn't feel quite right to you ><]
[OS: No real-life inspiration. There is an original short story.]
[OS: A small spoiler: time travel is not the story's only appeal. There's something big coming later, and I've planted a few little clues ><]
Theme: Year after year.
