The Eleventh Year of Loving You

The last thing Lin Xu said to Xu Wanqing during the summer vacation before their second year of high school was, “Forget me.”

He gave her no chance to ask why before vanishing from her world completely.

Ten years later, they unexpectedly met again. He was holding a child, with a woman standing beside him. On her wrist was a bracelet identical to Xu Wanqing’s.

Xu Wanqing stood three steps away from a park bench and watched it all unfold.

Then she turned and left. She had no idea what right she had to approach him.

But the project couldn’t happen without her.

Le Xiang Life and Zhilian Technology had been negotiating a contract for six months, and she was the client’s sole designated on-site contact.

Her boss told her, “If you don’t take this project, you can kiss both your year-end bonus and promotion to manager goodbye.”

When she pushed open the door to the temporary office, Lin Xu was bent over adjusting some equipment. Ten years had passed, but he still used the same shampoo.

He didn’t look up. His first words were, “Long time no see. What should I call you now?”

Xu Wanqing slapped her employee badge down on the desk. “Your client.”

She thought they could keep things strictly professional.

Then she discovered that the child wasn’t his. The child had been adopted by his contract girlfriend and her partner. The woman wasn’t his wife, either. She was a college classmate with whom he had signed a three-year mutual-support agreement. And the bracelet wasn’t a token of love. He had taken that blurry photo from years ago and asked someone to make a copy of the bracelet in it.

“That message from back then…” One night, while they were working overtime until the early hours, he pulled several yellowed medical reports from a folder. “I was afraid I wouldn’t live long enough to dare to have you.”

The name on the medical reports wasn’t his.

Xu Wanqing turned to the last page and saw a familiar name: Lin Xu’s mother. That night, she didn’t leave. She made him answer for suddenly disappearing ten years ago without a word, one thing at a time, until dawn.

“Lin Xu,” she said, “I saw the folder on your phone.”

Lin Xu went completely still.

The folder held every public post and photo Xu Wanqing had shared over the past ten years. From a college club group photo to her graduation ceremony to the employee badge photo she took on her first day at work. Not a single one was missing. The oldest photo was taken in the classroom on the day she first met Lin Xu. He had taken it himself, capturing her smile.

Lin Xu hadn’t deleted a single one.

In the eleventh year, Xu Wanqing finally understood: that boy had pushed her away not because he didn’t love her, but because after letting go of his mother’s hand, he no longer dared to hold anyone else’s.

But she wasn’t the seventeen-year-old girl who could only wait anymore.

Xu Wanqing handed his phone back, letting her fingers linger for a second at the base of his thumb, just as she had ten years ago.

“Lin Xu, you’re not getting away this time.”

Theme: Two sensitive, insecure people weather the long years and learn to accept themselves through one another, discovering that they deserve to be cherished.