[Career first | Realistic orientation | No forced marriage HE | Open ending]
When Xu Mingzhu was twenty-two years old, she moved from the university campus to a rental house.
She thought that loving someone meant accompanying him from nothing to having everything. But what Chen Yi wanted was for her to give up the job she had just been admitted to and return to a place within his reach. On the day they broke up, she stood on the bus stop, thinking that since she had chosen this road, she would finish it by herself.
Later she met Lu Zexing. Mature, thoughtful, able to clear the way for her and block the wind for her, he looked at her with admiration in his eyes. But she slowly discovered that there was a premise in that appreciation - she had to stay in his orbit, not to be seen, not to run too far. His family hoped that she would be transferred back to Ningzhou and that she would give up her ambition to "show herself in public". She stood in front of the half-open door and thought for a long time, then turned and walked out without looking back.
From the late-night editing room of the city station to the studio of the provincial station, from the unnoticed reserve announcer to the independent column leader, she has been walking for ten years. In these ten years, some people wanted to pull her back to where she was, some wanted to put her into the frame, some paved the way for her, and some closed the door for her. She didn't stop at any one place, she just kept moving forward along the line she drew when she was seven years old.
When she was thirty-one years old, she stood between the vase she bought and the pothos on the windowsill, looking at the dusk outside the window, feeling that the world was vast.
This is a novel about "walking a road alone". There is no golden finger, no noble man falling from the sky, just an ordinary girl who stands on her side in every choice.
Purpose: The story shows the growth process of contemporary women breaking away from external definitions and realizing their personal values on their own.
