Shen Nian was raised by Gu Huaizhi.
Eleven years ago, he was squatting in the stairwell, aged seven, with his knees red from the cold. Seventeen-year-old Gu Huaizhi squatted in front of him, stretched out his hand and said, I will protect you from now on. From then on, Gu Huaizhi brought Shen Nian breakfast, Gu Huaizhi waited at the school gate, and when his father's old creditor came to the door, it was Gu Huaizhi who stood in front of him.
Eleven years later, Gu Huaizhi sat across the dining table and said: I agree. He is going to marry the Lin family.
Shen Nian didn't ask why. He ran out of the villa and ran all the way to the old city under the orange street lights. He squatted beside the iron fence and buried his face in his knees. He knew that Gu Huaizhi would do everything for him, but he never asked him about this matter.
But what Shen Nian didn't know was that late at night in the winter of his sophomore year in high school, Gu Huaizhi got drunk and wrote a note, folded it and stuffed it into his pocket. It took me three times to write those seven words, and the paper had turned white at the creases. Gu Huaizhi put it in the breast pocket of his pajamas and kept it there for seven years.
On the eve of Shen Nian's eighteenth birthday, she finally asked those words - have you asked me?
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a long time.
Then Gu Huaizhi said, it won't happen later. Because you said that.
This is a story about development. About a man who cannot speak and a man who has waited too long. About two chairs side by side, a piece of creased pothos, and a note written three times. Seven years later, Shen Nian finally no longer needed to squat.
Intention: Real growth is not to leave, but to learn to stand side by side. It expresses that two people are gradually moving towards equality in an unequal relationship - two-way growth rather than one-way redemption. Explore the expressions of love: Some love cannot be said, but proven by repetition year after year.
