On the first day of the first year of high school, he picked up a gardenia under the red brick building.
The flowers fell from her hair - Shen Wanxing, the top grader in the key class, her eyes turned into crescents when she smiled, the focus of all the boys in the school. And he was just a taciturn boy in an ordinary class. His only ability was to draw all the words he couldn't say into his sketchbook.
From that day on, he began to secretly draw her.
Her fingers flipping through books in the library, her side face looking up at the stars on the rooftop, her back while waiting for her girlfriends at the milk tea shop at the school gate. He painted for a whole year without daring to speak. It wasn't until the rooftop on New Year's Eve that he handed her the sketchbook filled with her drawings and said awkwardly: "I like you, ever since the gardenia in your hair fell at my feet."
She cried. Then he gave him a crookedly knitted scarf.
They are together.
He thought this was the real beginning of the story. Little did she know that for her, this was the last chapter of the story.
She carried a secret from the day she was born - tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart disease. Her life had been counting down from the beginning, and she chose to spend the last three years of high school loving someone who needed to learn to be brave. She taught him to recognize constellations, taught him to draw gardenias, and taught him what it felt like to be loved without reservation. Then, as her condition took a turn for the worse, she began secretly writing letter after letter—letters to him on every important day for the next three years.
On the day when the college entrance examination bell rang, she held the gardenia he painted in the ward and left quietly.
Later he took the sketchbook with him to all the places she said she wanted to go. On the last page were the words she left for him:
"Thank you for letting me have these three years - as long as a lifetime. I will always love you."
This is a story about secret love and growth, protection and letting go. She taught him love, and he took this love and lived a good life for her. The gardenias bloom every year, the sea breeze blows every year, and he comes back to see her every year - as she said, people who have seen the stars together will still see the same starry sky no matter how far apart they are.
Purpose: I hope everyone can cherish those who love you
