He Is Far Away

[Updates on the print publication of this book can be found on Weibo: @Wen Xini]

[The next book, Don't Get Caught in the Rain, is coming soon. You can follow it in my author profile.]

"I like someone, and I hope he has a good life. That's all."

After finishing the last book in the Small Town series, Su Yao sat down for an interview with a reporter.

That day, the reporter asked what had inspired her to write the series.

For some reason, she suddenly didn't give the usual polished answer.

Gazing at the sparse curtain of rain outside the interview room, she said honestly, "All the books in this series were inspired by a boy."

"For a while, I slept poorly and couldn't fall asleep all night. When I picked up my pen, all I could think of was what he had been like in high school.

Actually, by then, I hadn't seen him or dreamed of him for a long time...

As for Small Town,

when he was seventeen, one ordinary Monday, he described to a friend what he imagined a secluded paradise would look like. That became the small town."

The reporter studied the descriptions of the protagonist in the book, curiosity multiplying. Looking at the girl before her, her almond-shaped eyes lowered beneath the studio lights, the reporter cautiously tried the most direct question: "Then, would you say this counts as a con, "

"No," Su Yao said with a smile, knowing what the reporter was about to ask. She interrupted and corrected her. "When I write about someone, I'm saying goodbye to him."

"So it's goodbye, not a confession."

"When I write about someone, I'm saying goodbye to him."

"And he is the protagonist of that book."

★

At the end of that day, after the interview, Su Yao unexpectedly bumped into someone in the corridor outside the interview room.

The person wore a black coat and was looking at her with a pair of striking, very dark eyes.

Su Yao met his gaze.

His voice was hoarse.

First he said, "Sorry."

Then he asked, "Am I a little late?"

★

"Sometimes I wonder what I like about him. When the sadness outweighs the happiness, I always feel it isn't worth it."

"When someone feels special to me, I always blur his face in my mind.

I blur it, make it clear again, then blur it once more.

After so much time, I can't even remember his face, and I don't mention him anymore.

Yet I still feel he's special."

"I traveled to so many cities for him. Or so I said. Really, I did it for myself."

"I dreamed he was in love, and a feeling of suffocation swallowed me."

"I hope he's happy, that life treats him kindly, and that he doesn't feel sad."

"Another year has passed, and I think I'm still very much in love with a boy.

For the new year, I won't make that wish anymore."

The story begins with him, far away. It ends with Su Yao's him.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

[Coming soon: Don't Get Caught in the Rain]

Before agreeing to marry Jiang Yiyu, Lin Suwan had seen him twice.

The first time was on the night after the college entrance exam. It was the 173rd time Lin Suwan's mother had stood her up.

While waiting for the bus in the rain, Lin Suwan saw Jiang Yiyu pass by with a bouquet of snow-in-summer flowers.

The boy wore a black windbreaker and a black baseball cap. Beneath the brim, his clear, misty eyes seemed to sweep over her.

The bus was about to arrive. The boy, soaked through, suddenly turned back and came to stand in front of her.

"Want the flowers?" Without meeting her eyes, he looked at the top of her head and asked in a casual, straightforward voice, a little abruptly.

-

The second time Lin Suwan saw Jiang Yiyu was at a cafe downstairs from her apartment building.

Jiang Yiyu was the man her father had chosen for her to marry.

After reading the prenuptial agreement, Lin Suwan looked up and unexpectedly met a pair of cool, deep, peach-blossom eyes that somehow held a trace of self-mockery.

"..." Lin Suwan didn't know what to say. After all, she'd taken advantage of him quite a bit back then.

She had bought a bunch of rare, expensive flowers from him for 35.7 yuan.

Lin Suwan wasn't sure whether the man in front of her remembered their brief encounter, so she decided to play dumb for now.

After a brief silence, the man, clearly amused, pulled the girl playing dumb back seven years.

He spoke in a low, languid voice. Lin Suwan heard him bring up the old debt, his tone cool and faint: "You still owe me 16.3 yuan for the flowers. What, aren't you planning to pay me back?"

Lin Suwan: "..."

Was he going to apply to Guinness for having the best memory in the world?

-

In the spring of their second year of marriage, Lin Suwan planned to get a divorce from Jiang Yiyu, just as they'd originally agreed.

The night before they were supposed to go to the civil affairs bureau, Lin Suwan attended a friend's birthday party.

She had prepared a fairly lavish gift to thank him for looking after her all these years.

Over the nearly ten years they'd known each other, she had received many umbrellas in the mail from this friend.

Her friend paused, then said, "Has Jiang Yiyu not told you? I wasn't the one who sent the umbrellas."

Seeing the confusion in Lin Suwan's eyes, her friend explained, "You didn't remember him, so he could only do it under my name."

At the end of that night, Lin Suwan ran into Jiang Yiyu outside the restaurant.

The man stood quietly. Half of his sharply defined, handsome, cool face was veiled by the rain, the other half hidden in the light.

After a brief silence, Lin Suwan walked up to him and took the unopened umbrella in his hand.

"Lin Suwan."

"Hm?"

"The civil affairs bureau is closed on rainy days."

He said it as though it were a matter of fact: "It's going to rain again tomorrow."

"..."

Seeing the girl fall silent, Jiang Yiyu stopped joking. His Adam's apple moved slightly as his dark eyes fixed on her, growing heavier and heavier.

After another quiet pause, the man took the umbrella back from Lin Suwan. She watched him open it and hold it over her head, shielding her from the wind and rain. His beautiful peach-blossom eyes looked at her as he sighed and said, "Don't get caught in the rain."

Her friend's words from not long ago echoed in Lin Suwan's ears: "You don't like rainy days, and you often lose your umbrellas. You planned to go to college in a city with a long rainy season. Maybe if you had enough umbrellas, you wouldn't get rained on again."

And what about you?

Lin Suwan looked at the man holding the umbrella over her while drenched from head to toe himself. She wanted to say, "You're the one who hates rain the most."

-

Lin Suwan: "I forgot the person in this world who loves me most."

Jiang Yiyu: "The night I confessed to her, she looked at me like a stranger and asked, 'Do I know you?'"

"'Do I know you?' was meant literally after all."

Theme: Love yourself first.