In the autumn when Feng Qianyu was fourteen, she met a woman holding a long black umbrella in the rain.
The man's name was Lin Qingyi, and he was his mother's student. She had a gentle smile, would tell her "we are adults" under the umbrella, would cook a bowl of brown sugar water with the excuse "I don't like ginger" when she was on her period, and would accompany her mother until dawn when she was on a business trip. Feng Qianyu thought that this person would stay at their home forever.
But Lin Qingyi left. Silent, no farewell.
Four years later, Feng Qianyu walked into Lin Qingyi's class as a freshman majoring in psychology at Ningjiang University. She kept that promise - but Lin Qingyi on the podium was no longer the person in her memory who would smile and rub her head. She became restrained and distant, with a transparent sense of distance. What Feng Qianyu didn't know was that the reason for Lin Qingyi's departure was hidden in a past incident of her mother, Xiao Wanxi. In that period of time, there was also a woman who had guarded Xiao Wanxi for more than ten years - Ye Ningxuan.
One was a girl who grew up in a single-parent family and spent four years fulfilling a promise; the other was a person who had been pushed away and spent four years learning to get closer again. As for their mothers, one was trapped in guilt and did not dare to move forward, while the other waited for too long and finally decided not to wait any longer.
In the eight years since I first encountered the family portrait on the balcony in the rain, some have grown up, some have let go, some have waited, and some have chosen. They all found their place.
In a sentence: One person is willing to wait, and one person does not give up, so they come here.
Intention:
"We are adults to each other."
——
Intent: A story about "loving each other equally". It's not who waits for the other to grow up, or who saves the other, it's the two people going from looking up and looking down to standing side by side.