We shared milk tea shops in the height of summer, parking lots in late autumn, and kisses on the sofa on winter nights...
But we could never escape the cage forged by seventeen years.
She had a "roommate" she had loved for seventeen years, and a secret she couldn't tell anyone.
And I was just a fleeting moment outside the orderly life she had built.
I once called her my butterfly, destined to fly far away and leave me for good.
Later, the butterfly truly spread her wings and left me behind in a barren year without snow.
I thought the story's final chapter would be beautiful.
Until fate sneered. On a night of torrential rain, she came to my door, soaked to the skin.
"I read every one of your posts," she whispered, her breath hot.
The ice of three months apart shattered in an instant. That night, she got drunk on my sofa. The kiss was a fuse out of control, setting alight the dark fire we had suppressed for four years.
But the truth was a blade: between us lay a loyalty and betrayal we could never overcome.
What is love?
It's the chicken soup she brought me through the rain, the eleventh-floor window where she secretly photographed my back, and "I take the long way home from work every day just to see if your lights are on."
It's also her blurting out, "If that's what you want to think, there's nothing I can do," the hand she suddenly pulled away when a check-in call came, and the heart-piercing words, "I have a responsibility to her."
We held each other in the pouring rain, then fled to hide beneath the scorching sun of the world around us.
A camera silently recorded our forbidden kiss; our chat window hid the cruelest curses and the most humble pleas.
Every time we drew close, it was like fireworks in the dark: brilliant for a moment, then followed by an even deeper burn.
She said, "I'm poison, not an antidote."
And yet I took it willingly.
When the diving bell closes again, can the butterfly break free from the deep blue of fate? Will this love, which began at sunset, was trapped in the rain, and struggled through the bitter winter, end in a final farewell, or... be reborn through fire?
"Love is sacrifice. It's noble," she once proclaimed.
"Love is seeing someone, and protecting their solitude and freedom," I quietly retorted.
"Hate lasts longer than love. Making someone who once loved you hate you is the cruelest curse in the world."
"If Heaven has a way, it won't let lovers be parted. If Heaven has no way, then all we can do is follow its will."
"I'll run behind you and keep you company. Don't look back. Run forward with all your might."
Theme: Love is feeling happiness and pain whenever you think of her.
