1/
After Shu Yu passed away, her attending physician, Ning Fangyan, finished reading the diary she had left behind. After the final entry, a short passage, like a personal confession, had been written at the end.
It read:
When I was eighteen, I gave up the chance to attend China's most prestigious university and resolutely devoted myself to defending my motherland's coast.
Over the years, I endured more than a dozen typhoons and the worst torrential rains on record. Natural disasters couldn't defeat me. Faced with countless people's doubts, mockery, and incomprehension, I still chose to press on without hesitation.
People's words can be terrifying, but they couldn't bring me down.
Over the years, I asked for no reward and counted no sacrifices. I even put life and death aside, coming close to death countless times and walking through the gates of the underworld again and again.
I thought everyone was as warmhearted as I was.
But I was wrong.
2/
Shu Yu gave so much to the world, saving nearly a hundred people from danger.
Yet no one could save her life. She lived only thirty-two years and three months.
She was alone, leaving behind nothing but this diary.
As she lay dying, she smiled peacefully. Her eyes held a little regret, along with many emotions I couldn't understand.
She softly told me that if I could, I should go to 38 Nanqing Road for her every Valentine's Day from then on, and see whether her beloved was still as well as before.
It rained heavily the day she died, as if heaven and earth were mourning with her, even the skies unable to hold back their tears.
Later, I pieced together her life from the few words in that diary. The moment I finished reading it, an immense sense of regret and an overwhelming emptiness swept over me.
At last, I understood those inexplicable smiles in the final days of her life. Perhaps she wasn't losing her mind. Perhaps she was imagining the joy of reuniting with that person.
The following year, beneath the chilly spring breeze, I went to the largest cemetery in the area at 38 Nanqing Road. At his grave, I told the film director and screenwriter who had come to visit me about the final stretch of her life.
Before leaving, they asked what they should call the film. I was silent for a long time, then said just six words.
Diary of a Dying Rose.
I named the diary Diary of a Dying Rose.
These six short words were her whole life.
-- Ning Fangyan.
3/
Ning Fangyan: I have wandered through life for a long time. For ten years, I have repaid kindness with betrayal, and lost both teachers and friends to life and death.
But I have no regrets.
And remember to tell Duan Zizhou that I've hated him more than anyone in my life.
I have hated Duan Zizhou more than anyone in my life.
[Surgeon x head of an aerial maritime rescue team]
Theme: At the time, it all seemed ordinary
