After All the Chaos, I Still Find Peace in This Body

When he was seven years old, Qi'an hid in the corridor where the voice-activated light was broken and met Jiang Yunian, who had just moved in. He sat down next to her and said, "Now someone can see." That was the last kind word he said to her in his life. From then on, their daily life became: she came first in the exam, he came second in the exam, and he said "You are lucky this time"; she learned to play the ukulele for him, and he said "it makes my ears hurt" - and then detoured to the corridor the next day to wait for her to play the next song. The whole school knew they were mortal enemies. Lin Yan said, "Jiang Yunian absolutely likes you." Qi'an thought about it seriously: "He just wants to beat me." When Jiang Yunian heard this, he was so angry that he didn't talk to her for the whole day. The next day, he took a detour to her alley to wait for her to go to school. In his sophomore year of high school, Qi'an suddenly disappeared. Her father's domestic violence, stomach cancer diagnosed at the age of sixteen - she took all the secrets and went to Shanghai alone for treatment, and deleted all contact information with Jiang Yunian. On the eve of the operation, she wrote in her diary: "Jiang Yunian, I'm sorry. Don't wait for me." Eight years later, he heard her voice at a forum in Beijing. She changed from the little girl hiding in the corridor to a person standing on the stage singing. She sang a song called "Stars in the Corridor". After their reunion, he gave her an old cell phone that she thought she had lost and that he kept for eight years. She turned on her phone and saw all the diaries she had written back then. Then she discovers a hidden folder containing a man's diary written for ten years. From the sixth grade of elementary school, to the day she disappeared, to the night they reunited. The last one read: "She is back. I want to return the strawberry candy to her." She went to find him with her cell phone. He looked into her eyes, was silent for a long time, and said: "Since the sixth grade of elementary school. It's not that I like you, but I like you a lot more. So much that I'm still in the same place after you ran away for eight years. You idiot." She took out a candy from her pocket, strawberry flavored, the wrapper had faded, it was the one he gave her eight years ago. "Aren't you going to give it back to me? I've accepted it. There's no need to save it in the future." She is still wood. He still has a bad mouth. But this time, he didn't let go. Intent: This is a story about "seeing". Two children who grew up in the shadow of their respective families - one learned to hide from his father's domestic violence, and the other learned to be tough-tongued under the aura of his brother - met in a dark corridor and became the first person in each other's lives to truly "see" themselves. The novel attempts to express not only love, but also a profound mutual recognition: in your darkest age, someone saw your existence, your wounds, and your hidden smile - just this "seeing" is enough to be a person's light out of the darkness. Real companionship is not to rescue, but to sit down in the corridor where the voice-activated light is broken and say, "Now someone can see."