The Unknown First Love

At their tenth high school reunion, Li Yang unexpectedly learned that Chen Jingzhe had passed away.

The class monitor was drunk and raised his glass with a sigh. “I never thought that he... the one the teachers used to call a disgrace... would become a hero.”

Chen Jingzhe had died of exposure in an ice hole outside a village on New Year’s Eve, after saving a child.

Everyone mourned the young life lost, and the class monitor continued, taking the lead once more. “Although Chen Jingzhe was only in our class for half a year, he was still one of us in Class 18. Everyone, stand up and raise a glass to Chen.”

The students rose in a clamor, and someone in the corner caught everyone’s attention.

Li Yang’s face was deathly pale, his eyes rimmed red. He was already sobbing uncontrollably.

No one present knew that Chen Jingzhe had been Li Yang’s first love.

*

Chen Jingzhe was born on Jingzhe, the day marking the start of spring’s awakening. Li Yang teased him that his parents must have picked his name on a whim.

Then he explained his own name to the boy beside him. “I was born in the early morning, right at dawn. My mom said the sun was shining and the sky was cloudless that day, all because her little sun had arrived.”

Li Yang was a little sun, but he was born on April Fool’s Day.

Chen Jingzhe didn’t tell him that he’d gone out of his way to look up the weather on the day Li Yang was born. He’d originally wanted to find out what time the sun rose that day, but unexpectedly discovered...

It had been raining on the day Li Yang was born.

1. A softhearted bad boy x a rebellious good kid

2. The gong is dead. Told in reverse chronology.

3. Their meeting was salvation, while missing each other was human nature. Out of cowardice and selfishness, he lost the person in this world who might have cared about him. But that made him brave again, perhaps because there was nothing left to lose.

Theme: Let the world be filled with love.