*Dedicated to the ten years I spent secretly loving you.
"Unrequited love was a bruise that wouldn't fade from my girlhood. Perhaps one day its color will blend into my skin, but I know it's still there, never healed."
*
"I'll forget you someday, on a typhoon day."
The day Nanjiang issued a rainstorm warning, Fu Ning was caught in a downpour beneath the eaves by the street. She unexpectedly met a pair of eyes.
She made a fool of herself, and people remembered the story for four or five years.
The shape of her nosebleed as it fell was just like a raindrop, landing on her white dress. What a mess.
The shopkeeper laughed and pointed at her, saying little Fu Ning had reached puberty and got a little too excited when she saw a handsome guy.
Fu Ning turned around in a panic and fumbled for a tissue, forgetting that the dress she wore that day had no pockets.
"Here. Don't tilt your head back."
The rain poured down as Chen Zhuo spoke with a smile in his voice.
For years afterward, Fu Ning kept asking herself one question:
Why did I wear a white dress that day?
The dirty water splashed from the ground, leaving dark stains on the hem.
The brown stain from her nosebleed never came out completely, no matter how many times she scrubbed it.
Each one was like a mark Chen Zhuo had left on her life.
Not etched into her bones or engraved in her heart, but quietly there all the same.
Perhaps, as time passed, she would throw away that outdated white dress.
Perhaps on some typhoon day, reminded by the thunder and rain, she would think again of those eyes she hadn't dreamed of in so long.
*
Fu Ning, you've loved him for years, and he doesn't even remember you.
But Fu Ning, if you could go back to that rainy day, you'd still say, "I do."
*First-person narration
Theme: Love runs deep because it hurts.
I was thinking about writing this article 😏