Idealist x Realist
Yuan Yi x Si He
1. Rental-room romance, college love, reunion after a long separation.
2. One-on-one, both virgins, probably an open ending (content warning: not a standard happy ending), with two intersecting timelines.
3. All characters, places, organizations, and events are fictional and have no real-life counterparts.
If this isn't for you, please stop reading in time.
In August, Si He took a vacation.
Alone, with a backpack and a sleeper-train ticket, she went to a small town somewhere in the south, nestled against the mountains and facing the sea.
In the middle of an old street lined with gray tiles and brick walls, someone in a clean white shirt strummed a guitar and sang an anonymous folk song.
With the guitar case open beside him, he watched Si He follow the crowd and toss in ten yuan.
Later, she kissed him ten streetlights away from her guesthouse, surrendering to the passion of a reunion after ten summers apart.
She recognized him: the first piece of luggage she had left behind when setting off ten years ago.
Yuan Yi, a student at the music academy, and Si He, a student at the design academy, met in the summer of their sophomore year.
Like many college couples, all they had was their passionate youth.
Yuan Yi wrote songs for her, and Si He tied his tie for him before his performances.
After graduation, they rented a shabby little room in an urban village and began drifting through the bustling city. Every now and then, they would be apart, but a phone call was enough to keep them talking all night, from one end of the country to the other.
Until they reached the crossroads between ideals and reality, and their slider phones were swallowed up by the tide of a time that kept rushing forward, becoming rare finds only seen in secondhand markets.
Ten years later, looking back from that crossroads, they saw how impulsive and reckless they had been, as if they had both forgotten how high the mountains rose and how long the rivers ran.
Theme: Ideals and reality, love and letting go
