Love You Before I Die

When Shi Pan returned from the city to the countryside and saw Chaochao, he was a dirty little kid sitting on the ground in ragged clothes. His mother said nothing, just kept making trip after trip to Chaochao's house with things.

Sometimes she brought bag after bag of vegetables and meat. Other times, she gave Chaochao his toys.

Shi Pan hated seeing the filthy village kids crowding around his front door. He hated the backward village, the villagers with their feudal attitudes, and the calculating look on Chaochao's grandma's face.

He hated most of all Chaochao, who sat in the mud all day, gazing at him with longing eyes.

But he never expected that Chaochao, at five years old, had been raised by his family into a little mute who could barely walk at a normal pace. Even less did he expect the first thing the little mute ever said to be, "Big brother."

Sometimes Shi Pan thought he was far too easy to win over. Just one "Big brother," and he began teaching Chaochao to read and write, teaching him to speak, teaching him to wash his dirty face, and teaching him that he couldn't keep eating cold steamed buns...

He even failed to finish five chapters of practice exams in one day because he was looking after the little kid he supposedly hated, and his mother punished him by making him kneel in the courtyard.

In the middle of the night, Shi Pan's legs had gone numb from kneeling. He had to use the light from upstairs to finish his homework while also looking after Chaochao, who had climbed over the wall and come in crying.

Shi Pan scowled and told him to stop crying, but still wiped his face with his clean sleeve. For the rest of the night, he also had to deal with Chaochao falling asleep against him, clutching a little dog in his arms.

They say the regrets of youth always come back in another form.

I met him again when I was seriously ill.

That day, I sat in my wheelchair watching the fireworks. I remember him climbing over the wall and crashing into my heart once more. Sadly, I was already gravely ill and could no longer spend the rest of my life with him.

He said it was all right. He would push me around the world and show it all to me, with both him and me in it.

I would love him wholeheartedly before I died. I closed my eyes forever. They say his regret was never taking me to see the fireworks one last time.

Reader's Guide:

1. Content warning: Be

2. Childhood friends, same high school. The beginning includes scenes from their childhood, and the later part gets a little angsty.

3. I'm terrible at writing blurbs, but that's more or less it.

Currently serializing: [Raising a Little Fool in the 1990s and Becoming a Tea Tycoon] Please add it to your reading list.

Xu Tingyu is a little fool nobody in the village wants. He's always hungry and cold, and keeps trying to please Liang Huaiqing with cheap little trinkets.

Liang Huaiqing sees all his attempts for what they are: clumsy, low-class tricks. He won't fall for them, won't raise a little fool, and definitely won't take him out of the village.

But on the day he was supposed to leave, plenty of people saw him pedaling furiously on a single-speed bike, with the little fool who cried at the drop of a hat sitting comfortably on the back, as they rode away from the village together.

Liang Huaiqing insisted he had no intention of raising him. He was only taking the little fool to the city to find a good family to adopt him.

The green tea market in Huaicheng was booming. A friend approached Liang Huaiqing with a plan: his friend would put up the money, Liang Huaiqing would put in the work, and together they would grow their tea business.

Liang Huaiqing, who hated tea farming, sternly refused. He would never touch the tea industry again, never process tea, and never earn a penny from tea leaves. He also asked his friend to find someone to adopt Xu Tingyu as soon as possible.

But the day after his friend brought news of a potential adoption, he saw Liang Huaiqing at his tea plantation. Not only was Liang Huaiqing processing tea like a pro, but from then on, every green tea he handled became the biggest bestseller in all of Huaicheng.

Liang Huaiqing insisted he had no intention of going into the tea business. Xu Tingyu was just in poor health and needed a large sum of money. He was only raising him until he recovered.

Years later, Liang Huaiqing had become a wealthy tea merchant and the inheritor of one of China's ten famous teas. After giving an interview in a suit and tie, he went home, got a basin, and scrubbed clean the rabbit plushies Xu Tingyu had been collecting for days, one by one. Then he clipped them by the ears and hung them outside to dry.

After a photo of him doing this was published, a reporter asked curiously, "I hear you dote on your partner. You just got back from a busy day at work, and then spent two hours washing his plushies."

Liang Huaiqing said he was only indulging Xu Tingyu because he was eleven years younger. Washing the toys was just something he happened to do, and he certainly didn't spoil him.

After he said this, the reporter noticed a little white rabbit watch drawn in black ink on his wrist, peeking out from beneath his suit.

Theme: Education shapes a person's entire life.