[Will begin posting once the whole story is complete]
At the height of their ambiguous relationship, the young man once casually asked her which university she wanted to attend.
As she remembered it, she avoided Xu Xiangfan's gaze, lowered her eyelashes toward the bluestone path at her feet, and softly named a school.
It was the first lie Zhuang Xufan had ever told.
The day the lie was exposed, Xu Xiangfan, distraught and disheveled, raced across half the city before stopping beneath a girls' dormitory building.
There he ran into Zhuang Xufan, who had come downstairs to throw out the trash.
Beneath a banyan tree weathered by a century of wind and frost stood the travel-worn young man, his eyes tinged red.
"You played me," Xu Xiangfan declared.
Zhuang Xufan didn't answer, but the truth was obvious.
The young man's proud heart quietly shattered, and a kiss laced with resentment landed on Zhuang Xufan's lips.
As they struggled, she tasted a faint trace of blood and, in that dazed moment, remembered a gathering from when they had barely known each other.
Xu Xiangfan leaned against the railing of a hotel, gazing at the distant horizon where sea met sky. Without a care, he announced his discovery to her: "You like me."
His voice carried that familiar certainty.
With her secret feelings exposed, Zhuang Xufan turned to seek his eyes, but the young man was still gazing into the distance.
Zhuang Xufan thought, she hated that certainty.
That was also the first time in her life she had blushed.
But what gave him the right to dismiss her feelings?
Maybe before that, all that stood between them was a thin veil of ambiguity. Zhuang Xufan could have easily pierced it and reached a happy ending, but she didn't want to take that easy step.
She wanted him to climb her mountain.
Blurb saved as a screenshot on 2024.05.05
Theme: Love yourself first
