After the Rain

At the beginning of her first year of high school, Xu Zhaonian met Chen Qichi who had taken her window seat. The young man was cold and taciturn, but his talent overwhelmed everyone. He was ranked first in the grade every time, but she was always the second child. She regarded him as her only opponent. She kept a small notebook with her full of his schedule and writing habits, and vowed to catch up with his scores. She never thought that she would catch up with his heart first. She moved to sit next to him, mixing warm water for him every day, and holding a dark blue long-handled umbrella together on rainy days. The umbrella was always tilted to her side, soaking his entire left shoulder; He calmly tolerated all her clumsy struggles, remembered her cold-sensitive hands and feet, her preference for lemonade, and regretted the piano music left by her deceased mother. He secretly wrote countless melodies, planning to play them to her in person after the college entrance examination. The two-way secret love is hidden in the trivial daily life of three years: the problem-solving notes for self-study in the evening, the "Carousel of Life" played just for her in the art performance, the brown sugar ginger tea delivered in the rain on New Year's Eve, the old photos of her crying in the audience that have been hidden in the drawer for three years. They survived countless monthly exams and the high-pressure senior year of high school. Finally, when the college entrance exam was over and the admission notice was received, the young man rushed to her house for an appointment with an envelope filled with confessions. There was a sudden heavy rain, and the underground passage was flooded with water. He could never walk in front of her again. A phone call with bad news shattered all the expectations of the seventeen-year-old. In his empty bedroom, she found unsent concert tickets, an unsent letter of confession, and a half-length piano recording. The sentence "I like you" was forever stuck in the folds of the paper and could not be said out. Many years later, Xu Zhaonian went to the north to study at university. He held the broken old umbrella all year round and let the rain soak his left shoulder. Returning to his alma mater, the younger students still remember the genius who was the number one, and a incomplete recording circulated in the school. Rain falls on the world year after year, and some people will always stop at the age of eighteen, leaving behind a long and unfulfilled youth promise for the rest of their lives. Purpose: To tell the story of a two-way secret love between well-matched academics, to interpret the unfulfilled promises in youth through the regretful story of life, separation, and death, and to explore the core of cherishing the present and reconciling with regrets in life.