Her Seventh Heartbeat

Song Lie spent ten years remembering a small kindness, remembering the little girl's back and the words "you're welcome". When he finally met Li Qing again in college, she didn't recognize him at all - that memory was too small for her, so small that she didn't even have a name. He began to approach quietly. Not high-profile, not obtrusive, just "happening" to appear at every moment when she might need help. On the steps at the door of the library, in the activity room where she stayed up late writing manuscripts, and late at night when her father was hospitalized - he was like a shadow, blocking just where she needed to be. Li Qing remained calm at first. She was used to keeping everyone at a safe distance, until Song Lie spent an entire autumn proving that his approach did not involve any demands. She began to relax, began to get used to the warmth of his presence, and began to think that this was the time when fate was finally willing to favor her. But Shen Du came. With three years of unwillingness and an intuitive hostility, he began to plant seeds of doubt in Li Qing's ears: "Have you ever thought about why he is there every time you need help?" Li Qing is not stupid. She went back and counted the "happens" in detail - she happened to appear on the steps of the library door, happened to be outside the cafe where she worked part-time, happened to hand over a bank card when her father had an accident - every "happen" was as precise as measuring a distance. She began to observe Song Lie. Look at his lowered eyelashes after she turns around, look at the fatigue he occasionally shows, as if he is carrying a whole mountain on his back, look at him sometimes suddenly holding her hand, as if he is afraid that she will disappear. Then she discovered the old notebook. The cover was worn white, and the back of the same girl with a ponytail was densely painted on it for thirteen years. The latest date is the day before freshman registration. Li Qing put the notebook back where it belonged and stood on the balcony all night. The November wind blew into her neckline, but she didn't shed a single tear - she had never been one to cry. She just felt that her heart was beating so fast that she needed to hold on to the railing to stand steady. It turns out he remembered her. It turned out that someone had remembered that afternoon that even she had forgotten for ten years. But what followed was another kind of sinking. She began to wonder: Is he approaching me out of gratitude, or is it something else? If it wasn't me who ran past in the alley at that time, would there be another person who would be remembered like this by him? She doesn't want to be a "repayed person". So the tug-of-war began - Song Lie thought she didn't know anything and continued to treat her quietly with the habit he had developed over the past ten years; Li Qing knew everything but didn't reveal it. She wanted an answer: Are you approaching me because I am who I am, or because it happened to be me in the alley that year. Everyone around them was involved in this silent tug-of-war: Lin Zhi was researching Song Lie's childhood, Shen Du was gradually losing control in jealousy, Zhou Wan dug out the exercise book of Song Lie when he was a child in the attic of an old bookstore, and Chen Duzhou saw in Li Qing the same stubbornness as her mother when she was young. Everyone has secrets. All the secrets are wrapped around the same name. This is a story about "being remembered" - a small thing you did casually when you were fourteen years old. Someone spent the entire boyhood ruminating, tracing, and waiting for a reunion. This is also a story about "whether it's worth it" - what Li Qing ultimately wants to answer is whether he is willing to become the coordinate in other people's memories, not just a gust of wind in the alley that year. Song Lie wanted to answer another thing: did he like the little girl running towards him in his memory, or Li Qing, who was standing in front of him at the moment, as cold as the first snow, but would send him "Are you asleep" in the middle of the night? Intention: "The afternoon you forgot is all my trump card in the long years to come. But when I finally come to you, I want you to know - I am not here to pay off my debt, but to get to know you again."