I am Wei Sheng, guarding a tavern called "Shu Tian Jiu Di" in a city where it rains all the time.
At the age of twenty-three, I lost her. On the rainy night when she posted her first-anniversary photo with someone else on WeChat, I deleted all contact information, thinking that I could finally start over openly.
At midnight, a woman opened the door of the pub.
She was soaked all over and felt so miserable that it made people feel distressed, but she drank a whole glass of vodka and said with a smile: "I have been with 20 people. Do you want to hear a story?"
So, surrounded by the sound of rain and music, she talked about her first secret love - the girl who had been entangled throughout her youth since the first day of junior high school, those torn letters, the "Star of Happiness" carved on the tree, the letter still pressed at the bottom of the box fifteen years later...
She had been drinking as she spoke, her tears mixed with the vodka. I don't know when I was attracted to her - was it the trembling voice when she read the letter, the way the smoke covered her eyes when she leaned on the bar and smoked, or the moment when she instinctively hid in my arms amid the thunder?
Two short-haired T-shirts, one has been hurt by love, and the other has loved too many people. The tavern at two o'clock in the morning became an isolated island for them to exchange wounds.
She said she had twenty stories. I just finished the first night.
It's still raining outside.
I don't know if she will come tomorrow, and I don't know if I can hold on to my heart that is about to fall.
But at least on this rainy night, we leaned together briefly, like the last two people in the world who have not yet learned to love.
Purpose: What this novel wants to say is: You don't have to be brilliant, and you don't have to live the way anyone expects you to. You can get drunk in a pub late at night, cry in the arms of strangers, and keep a letter for fifteen years. You are fragile, clumsy, and imperfect—but that doesn't stop you from being worthy of being heard and treated with tenderness.
