Premise: Li Chishu knows about my rebirth (if)
"Are you scared?"
Li Chishu once asked me this.
"Afraid." I answered without hesitation.
Of course I'm afraid.
I was afraid that the warm home would be overturned and cease to exist as soon as I opened my eyes, and I was afraid that I would return to the empty mourning hall with dust floating around. Seeing myself helplessly falling to the ground, holding a black and white photo of Li Chishu and crying, I blamed myself over and over again:
Why wasn't his decline discovered earlier?
Why can't I do anything?
I can only sit on the ground like an idiot, crying and questioning myself pointlessly.
I hate my own hindsight.
My Li Chishu should be holding my sleeve when I go shopping, coquettishly pestering me to buy this or that, looking at me with a pair of timid, expectant clear eyes; or he should be satisfied with his wish and actively throw himself into his arms, slightly stepping on his feet, pressing a kiss with the sweet smell of a cone on the side of my face, but then quickly breaking away with a blushing face, lowering his head slightly, and showing an embarrassed smile.
This is what eighteen-year-old Li Chishu should look like.
Twenty-eight-year-old Li Chishu was still smiling, but his eyes were gone. Numbness, paleness and pain accompanied him in the dark night, but quietly took away his sunshine.
Twenty-eight-year-old Shen Baoshan failed to save twenty-eight-year-old Li Chishu, but eighteen-year-old Shen Baoshan did.
In this life, when Shen Baoshan was in physical education class at the age of eighteen, on that sunny morning, he took Li Chishu's hand and pulled him into the sunshine and to his side.
Thank you for reaching out to me again.
And,
Thank you for not choosing to let go when you held my hand again.
On the bench, the storybook that had been written to the end was blown forward by the wind and the pages were turned forward. Those old and unwilling to mention the past were rewritten in the coming spring.
The old land is no longer barren, and white gardenia branches are growing new.
Intention: The old land is no longer barren, and the white gardenia branches are growing new.