The Good Times

When she was young, time always seemed endless, as if she would never reach the other shore. Ye Wan now thinks her younger self was childish, though back then she didn't know it. In the springtime of her youth, she was stubborn and willful, believing everything was hers by right. She thought no one could defy her. Her pretty face won her the affection of boys, and she grew ever more brazen. Getting into fights with other girls was routine. She was known as a problem girl at school and couldn't make friends. In twenty years, she had only two confidants, Su Le and Lin Liang, yet she still thought herself different, convinced that others simply didn't understand her. They really didn't understand, because she wasn't worth the effort. Only later did she realize how selfish and domineering she had been. It wasn't until she fell in love with Yu Shiguang at sixteen that she learned how much could go wrong in life, and how powerless she was against fate. She had always imagined she would fall for a wild, free-spirited traveling artist and run away with him beneath the sunset, to the ends of the earth, or some street-corner delinquent, kissing amid blood and knives. She never thought she would love someone so utterly different from Yu Shiguang, nor did she know love could be so intense that it would nearly shatter her life. The man before her, called Ouyang, radiated an air that was both dangerous and alluring.