When Drowning

The wind at Nanjiang University is filled with the bookish atmosphere of autumn, and it also carries the silent malaise of the young people. Xu Ran, burdened with his mother's crazy debt and the shadow of his father's prison, is like a smoldering fire in the ashes, silent and tired. Ji Yao is like a thin silhouette frozen in a frame. The haze of his parents' early death has already penetrated into his bones, accompanied by his lingering cough and deep concentration on the painting brush. They are like two lonely rivers flowing in parallel, meandering silently on the edge of the hustle and bustle of the ivory tower. An accidental gaze in the classroom, an unexpected pull on the avenue, the eyes touched each other's abyss-like background. The vines of fate quietly entangled, and the alienation test in the autumn and winter of the sophomore year finally blossomed in the cold despair of the junior year. When Xu Ran was exhausted mentally and physically running for her sick mother, Ji Yao also swallowed the cruel diagnosis of a rare lung disease alone. Their approach was like the embrace of ice water and embers, and their silent companionship became each other's only anchor point on their respective thorny roads. The time they weave together is dense, heavy and pure. It is the shadow of the sun on the library window pane, the heat of the cheap food stall, the silent clasping hand of Ji Yao in front of the hospital bed, and the hug with the cold wind when Xu Ran returns from running around. Love crystallizes under the countdown to death, so pure that it is almost tragic. However, the dry river of life cannot flow back. At the end of the winter of his senior year, in Xu Ran's arms, Ji Yao's body temperature cooled down inch by inch in the bleak wind on the eve of his parents' death. The last words he left to Xu Ran were about the spring that had not yet arrived. Xu Ran buried Ji Yao with his own hands and buried the only morning light in his gloomy world. Spring finally came in a mighty way, but his heart felt like a dry river. There was only an unfinished hug on the bank and a boat that was forever stranded in the cold winter. Intention: Even if life is like a river bed destined to dry up, lonely souls use pure love as a blade to carve an instant and eternal mark on each other's abyss - that unbearable loss eventually turns into gravel at the bottom of the river for the living to continue trekking, silently carrying the weight of love that once surged through.