Zhixia Knows No Autumn

Su Ti grew up in the mud. Her mother ran away. Her father drank, and when he got drunk, he beat her, blaming her for looking like that vixen. Behind the wet market, in the alley by the school, beneath the fruit shop’s low roller shutter, there were people everywhere, waiting to laugh at her. She thought this was all her life would ever be. She didn’t deserve to be loved, and no one would ever wait for her to come home. Until Lin Zhixia appeared. Lin Zhixia had been transported into a terribly boring school story. According to the original plot, Su Ti was a beautiful, powerful, tragic villainess who would turn evil in the future: cold and crazy. But when Lin Zhixia saw the girl sitting beside her, bruised all over beneath her school uniform, she couldn’t help handing her a jacket and saying, “Come on.” Later, Su Ti cried on her bed, whispered “Don’t go” beneath the dim bedside lamp, and secretly clasped her hand in an empty classroom. Lin Zhixia thought they would stay happy together forever, from school uniforms to college, from the fruit shop to a bigger world. But Su Ti flew away. Just as the original story foretold, she became a model, entered show business, and turned into a glamorous, icy superstar in everyone’s eyes. Lin Zhixia stayed behind. On the day they broke up, neither of them said anything cruel. For years afterward, Su Ti never returned to that little town. Until one summer night, she sat in her car, parked beneath an old apartment building. The window was dark. She said, “Lin Zhixia, I miss you so much.” Some people are a summer you can’t escape, even after running from them for half your life. Theme: Every child who grows up in the mire deserves to be caught by the light. Love isn’t salvation. It’s walking side by side through one long season after another.