Xu He has schizophrenia, and relapses if she stops taking her medication.
Shen Heng is paraplegic. Every day at two in the morning, he goes to the convenience store to buy discounted rice balls nearing their expiration date.
Neither of them believes they will ever get better.
The first time Xu He saw Shen Heng, she thought of her dead father. They were both paraplegic, both quiet and reticent, each enduring all their misery alone in the dead of night.
She couldn't stop herself from getting close to him. Shen Heng didn't turn her away. He was too tired, too tired to drive away anyone willing to crouch down and meet his gaze.
They didn't save each other.
Xu He still suffers from insomnia and still slips into dissociative states beyond her control. The voices in her head have never truly disappeared. Shen Heng's wheelchair is still just as worn out, his pressure sores still recur, and the convenience store at two in the morning is still the only place he is willing to go.
Xu He moved into Shen Heng's one-bedroom rental, which had only a single bed. She put her medication on his desk, and he helped cover her with a blanket late at night. She brought his nearly dead pothos back to life, and he submitted the story he'd been writing for a long time to a magazine.
They began to believe that the sky would still grow bright.
Though they still hadn't become normal people and remained trapped in that narrow little world, having each other made them feel that living might not be quite so hard to endure after all.
This is a story about two people who won't get better, and how, little by little, they become less afraid.
[Reading Guide]
1. A short story written a very, very long time ago. The male and female leads are both virgins, and their love is platonic.
2. Happy ending.
Theme: Be brave enough to try, and don't fear difficulties
