When the poor country boy went to live with his uncle in International Manor, he was seventeen. He carried a snakeskin bag stuffed with old clothes and a reminder: "Don't be a burden to your relatives."
His uncle's only daughter, a spoiled brat three months younger than him, frowned the moment she saw him. "Poor boy, stick with me from now on. Don't embarrass me."
He became her lackey. He did her homework, carried her schoolbag, and kept other boys away. He even wrote love poems for her crush, the campus heartthrob Lin Zixuan. He was so good at poetry that Lin Zixuan could read another insecure, sensitive soul in his lines. So good that Lin Zhi ordered him to write one poem after another, never knowing how his pen trembled when he wrote about her.
The wind swept through old streets, hiding unspoken feelings in the silent past.
Someone carried half a scroll of poetry, stumbling through the bustle of everyday life.
Sheltering beneath another's roof, he folded his pride into a humble shell.
Everything in sight was an illusion, while obsession tightened into an inescapable net.
Who used sincerity as bait, fishing for an illusion as fleeting as flowers reflected in water and the moon in a mirror?
Who hid behind pride, concealing the turmoil in their heart?
The light they met was both salvation and frost that chilled them to the bone.
The warmth of drawing close was both tenderness and a wound that pierced the heart.
The words concealed unspoken feelings, and companionship was wrapped in an unvoiced, extravagant hope.
The road they traveled together was full of misunderstandings and uncertainty.
Everyone was trapped behind the walls of their own making, thinking they had seen through life's impermanence.
It was nothing more than self-deception, mistaking obsession for devotion.
Through half a lifetime of ups and downs, he never let go of that foolish hope in his heart.
Love and hate endured, while the ending remained hidden in the fog.
When the dust finally settles, who will escape unscathed?
And who will lose their whole life to this absurd affair?
Theme: Amid the overlapping pressures of class, reality, and human nature, can love overcome the gulf of fate and the limits of the self? This story reflects on the toll and destruction caused in intimate relationships by mismatched perceptions, failed communication, and an obsession with preserving one's dignity, portraying the struggles, weakness, and helplessness of ordinary people in love.
