Snowbound Migratory Bird

I stumbled and wandered through the years, going around in circles for so long. When I finally looked back, I was surprised to find that you had never gone far. If only we'd trusted each other just a little more back then, we wouldn't have spent so many years afterward nursing our regrets.

My name is Qin Buyu. My father chose it to express his steadfast love for my mother. But in the end, he broke his promise, and my name became a kind of humiliation that followed me as I grew up. Ever since I was little, my grandmother taught me that lying was a man's natural gift, and if Buyu wasn't smart enough, he shouldn't fall in love. Then I met you, and without even stopping to wonder whether I was smart enough, I just went ahead and got together with you.

We were young, that's all. Stubborn, proud, misunderstanding each other, and not cherishing what we had enough: in the end, we lost each other. Only after we broke up did I truly feel, for the first time, the grief of my mother and grandmother: my grandfather had let my grandmother down, my father had let my mother down, and you had let me down.

What makes fate so poignant is its unpredictability. During the seven years we were apart, I sometimes imagined we'd meet again, but the way it happened was too sudden, too absurdly dramatic. I showed up at your family dinner as Lu Yichuan, your subordinate, and the girlfriend of your beloved younger cousin. And so our story began again.