In the summer when she was sixteen, he was the White Rabbit toffee that could not be melted on the tip of her tongue, and the boy's thoughts that she could not express in her letters.
Twelve years ago, he broke his promise to "go to Beijing together" and has not been heard from since.
Twelve years later, he reappeared in the spotlight of the Dunhuang Cultural Relics Exhibition Hall. Wearing a suit and leather shoes, his eyes passed through the crowd and landed on her accurately: "In these twelve years, I have never forgotten you for a day."
The indifference and rationality that Su Nianwei spent three years building collapsed at this moment.
Today, she is an independent curator and holds a PhD in classical literature. She used academic rigor and workplace toughness to arm herself into an indestructible appearance. She vowed never to make the same mistake as her mother - spending her whole life in marriage and placing her happiness in the hands of others.
But Gu Huaian's return was like a long-planned storm. He opened the door to her heart with a well-planned academic project, and with the words "I can wait for you to slowly get to know me again", he broke down the high wall she had built for twelve years.
And outside the storm, there is someone who is always present.
Shen Qinghe, her childhood sweetheart, has been guarding her silently for eighteen years. He was like a cup of warm water, not hot but never cold. He was the most stable foundation in her life.
On one side is the reunion of young and passionate first love, on the other side is the quiet and long-term companionship of the years.
Standing at the crossroads of destiny, she must make a choice between "being loved" and "self-love": true love, is it to become a star in other people's world, or to become one's own sun first?
This book uses the thousands of years of splendid Dunhuang murals as the background to tell the story of how a woman finally understood during her journey of reconciliation with the past and reunion with herself——
She deserves to be loved, not because she is perfect enough, but because she is the light.
Purpose: This work aims to explore a core proposition: love is not an excuse for women to lose themselves, but a catalyst to become a better self.
Through Su Nianwei's choice between two relationships - one is the return of a passionate but traumatic first love when she was young, and the other is a long-term and silent protection in the long flow of water - the work attempts to answer the common dilemma of contemporary women between emotion and self: How do we find our own answer between the desire to "be loved" and the bottom line of "self-love"?
The story uses the thousands of years of vicissitudes of Dunhuang murals as a metaphor, placing personal emotional narratives in the larger context of civilization inheritance: Just as murals need to be eroded by wind and sand before they can reveal their true colors, women's growth also requires the transformation from "desire to be valued by others" to "belief in one's own worth" in the long journey of reconciliation with the past and reunion with oneself.
In the end, the work points to a simple truth——
The real sweetness is not being held in the palm of someone's hand, but the process of two people walking side by side and achieving each other's achievements. She deserves to be loved, not because she is good enough, but because she is worthy.
May all your scars eventually turn into light that illuminates the way forward