In the Smallest of Places

Childhood sweethearts / Reunion after years apart

They met in early autumn. The boy was fair and refined, distant and aloof.

She followed behind him on her own, walking along his shadow for a long way, but he never once looked back at her.

Later, his family fell on hard times, and her grandfather took him in. They became siblings under the same roof.

He accepted all her caprices and bad temper, but had his own inexplicable principles.

At school, he repeatedly reminded her to focus on her studies.

Yan Lai once asked him on purpose, "What if I like you?"

He fell silent.

It was as if he really did think of himself as her older brother.

But she no longer wanted to be his little sister.

She was a ray of light piercing his gloomy life.

He was a lone, rough-hewn man who had come out of the mountains with nothing. He fought with his bare hands to make his way in the world, and was willing to give her everything.

But the young girl who had clung to him for years gave up on him one day.

He watched her laughing and chatting happily with someone else.

He thought that as long as she was happy, that was enough.

Yet the pain gnawed at him day after day, tormenting him like bitter medicine throughout their three years apart.

Like a fish swimming upstream, he fought his way forward, desperate to prove that she could rely on him.

Until she casually saw through all the dark, shameful thoughts he had hidden away...

"At first, I didn't want you to give me anything. I was content as long as you needed me."

"But I couldn't get enough. I only grew greedier.

"I began to pray, to beg you to love me."

-Love lives in the smallest things.

★ Antique Restorer × Forensic Pathology Intern

★ Childhood Sweethearts / Reunion After Years Apart / Mutual Pining

-Early writing practice, two stories

Theme: Even an ordinary life can bloom like a flower