Shen Zuo signed a contract: for three years, he would be Fu Shen's personal curator.
Article 15 reads: "Whether it is reasonable or not shall be defined by Party A."
She thought it was a good deal--it was not a loss to exchange for her father's gallery in three years. She thought she was a hunter, calm, sober, and able to escape at any time.
But she didn't know that there was a kite from eleven years ago locked in Fu Shen's study. The tail of the kite was broken, and the note read "She chased the bus on tiptoes."
She was seventeen years old. She ran past the door of his gallery, and the kite broke its string and landed at her feet. She picked it up and ran half a street chasing the bus.
He remembered.
Eleven years later, he used a contract to keep her with him. He thought love was possession - if you pin the butterfly in a specimen frame, it won't fly away. She thought love was certainty - certainty that he wouldn't leave, certainty that he wouldn't hurt her, certainty that he was worth it.
But butterflies don't need to be held. It falls because it wants to fall.
"I may never get married."
"I know."
"Aren't you sorry?"
"Compared to you, getting married is nothing."
This is a story about "paranoia" and "freedom". Two people who didn't know how to stay, learned one thing during the eleven years of waiting and the tug of a three-year contract - love is not about possession, it is about being there well when she is there; love is not about certainty, it is about not knowing what will happen, but still choosing to stay.
Marriage is not the answer, she is here.
Concept: When a person's deepest fear is "abandonment," she will create abandonment before being abandoned. When a person's deepest wound is "loss", he will regard possession as love. This story is not about "the domineering president fell in love with me", but about two traumatized people, how to see their own patterns clearly in an intimate relationship, how to learn not to run away in pain, and how to stay in uncertainty. It is written to everyone who dares not approach in love - it's not that you don't want to love, you just don't know how. Can't learn.
