Aestivation

What sixteen-year-old An Shangchen is best at is swallowing back all his words. Don't say your grievances, don't say your discomfort, don't say your feelings, don't say "I need you". When she was six years old, she was slapped by her father. When the truth came out, she couldn't wait for an apology, so she learned to remain silent. She wrote those unspeakable words into the stars, stacked more than 900 of them, and hid them in glass bottles; she compressed those unanswered calls for help into a message at 2:17 in the morning - "Are you asleep?" In her second year of high school, she reunited with her closest friend Yun Tang. Estrangement, cold war, cautious approach, they went from inseparable to polite and alienated. At the same time, Liang An broke into her world. He is clumsy, direct, and can't hide things. He will give her warm water when she has a stomachache. He will go to the canteen twice on a rainy day to get her food soaked. He will call her at three o'clock in the morning and timidly ask: "Can I call you Chenbao?" They are together. That summer was the sweetest and most painful time in An Shangchen's life. He rented a small house in the county town and knocked on the door at 7:27 every morning. She folded more than nine hundred stars for him, each with a sentence written on it, from "I hope you get better and better" to "Liang An, I love you." She thought this summer would be very long, long enough to hold for a lifetime. But she forgot that she had been sick. Stomach pain, vomiting, and being unable to eat - she thought they were old problems and she would get over them after just dealing with them. It wasn't until the summer after the college entrance examination that she went to the hospital alone and got a report card that said "mid-stage gastric cancer." She began to avoid him. It's not that I don't love anymore, it's that I don't dare to love anymore. When he approached, she shrank back; when he asked, she looked away; when he wanted to hug her, her body froze. She saw his hands hanging in the air, saw the light in his eyes dimming, saw him holding back tears - but she couldn't say anything. Until she was gone. Later, Yun Tang said that the room was filled with the smell of gardenias on the day she left. She sprayed an entire bottle of perfume and it was all over the curtains, sheets, pillows, everywhere. Grandma opened the door, choked and coughed a few times, then sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand without crying. Liang An did not come to the funeral. It's not that he didn't want to come, it's just that no one told him. He is still in the north, watching his snow and living his life. Maybe one day he will open the bottle of stars, take apart the stars one by one, and see what she wrote. Maybe not. All I know is that in the spring of that year, the Xinyi trees bloomed again. The tree is full of light purple, and when the wind blows, the petals fall on the windowsill. No one sat at the window and watched. But the flowers will still bloom. Every year. "Aestimation" is not a novel about "forgiveness". It's about how a girl goes from "not speaking" to "being heard", about the love and pain hidden in silence, and about two people who clearly love each other deeply but are still separated. And that automatic reply that never goes away—— "I hope you are happy every day, no matter who you are." But I will also tell you that if you dare to express yourself bravely, dare to love and hate, your life will be more exciting. As for who I am, I am also settled in the dust. Concept: 1. The world is a body of contradictions: love and harm come from the same source, approaching and fleeing coexist. 2. The price of silence: Words left unsaid will push each other away. 3. Love is accepting imperfections and leaving tenderness in regrets.