In the humid town in the south, time seems to flow slower than elsewhere.
Chen Sui and Lu Qingye were like two grass seeds blown to the same land by the wind. He used to use his sketchbook to record the sky in the puddles, and she used to use that small recording pen to record the sounds of rain in different seasons. Their high school days were the same book in the library, the two shadows under the street lights of the white air from the bus stop during the winter solstice, and the dusk they spent quietly fifty meters apart by the abandoned railway tracks. We have never agreed, but we always meet quietly in the corner of life; we have never made it clear, but we understand the quiet concentration when the other person looks at the world.
Later, the wind blew the grass seeds in all directions. He went to study architecture in the north and she studied botany in the south. Between two points on the map that are hundreds of kilometers apart, they are each in unfamiliar soil, learning to take root, sprout, and grow into their own image - silent, tenacious, and facing the light.
Many years later, they returned to their original towns. They once again became quiet neighbors in this land, nodding goodbye at the twilight alley, one to the left, the other to the right, their figures blending into the rising smoke. There is no ecstasy of reunion, no unfinished regrets, only an understanding deeply rooted in daily life: maybe they no longer need to interact closely, because the life on the land they jointly participate in guarding has itself become a deeper and quieter river, slowly moving forward.
This is a narrative without confessions or farewells. About those unformed emotions that shape the foundation of our lives, about how nostalgia can be embodied in the temperature of a bowl of vegetable and tofu soup, the promise of a seed, and the faded scratches on an old map. The people in the story live marginally but seriously, and love lightly but long-lastingly - like grass seeds, they do not occupy the center, but let the whole field breathe.
"Grass Seed" is written for all those who grow quietly in the noisy world, for all "light" but profound relationships, and for the invisible but never broken thread between hometown and the distance. Open this book and you will hear the gentlest echo of life itself.
Intention: A slow down life