On Metro Line 2, a young man accidentally touched a woman's shoulder. The woman turned back and rolled her eyes at him. Just for this one look, he spent fifteen years watching, chasing, and indulging in it, painting night scenes of Shanghai, sending white porcelain cups, keeping blessings at midnight, and changing couple portraits, until he passed away at the age of forty-six with a subway ticket in hand. And she had already married, had a child, and was holding coffee in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, without even really remembering his name. This is a chronicle of unequal affection, describing how a person blossoms in the dust and is blown away by the wind of silence - desolate, restrained, with Zhang Ailing-style compassion and self-mockery.
Purpose: Affection is never measured by the other person's response. A person can complete a grand love without being known at all - this "completion" itself is not only a betrayal of life, but also a fulfillment of life. The novel is about an unequal obsession: he regards her as God, she regards him as air, and the air has weight because of God's existence, although God can never feel it. What I want to say in the end is this: Some people's feelings are unreasonable, like the subway loop, like the tide, and like some plants that only bloom once - they die after blooming, but once they bloom, they bloom.
