Library

When the tide comes, the piano is rusting. Wen Shu painted the wrist bones of Jiang Yubai playing the piano for three years-painting the rosin on the cuffs of his school uniform, painting the lemon candies that were always left for her on his music stand, and painting the fingers that he used to tape over the cracks when the Tianqin room leaked during heavy rain. Everyone remembers how the teenager who always topped the exam hid her sketchbook among the piano scores and used her body temperature to warm her frozen hands backstage at the concert until the transfer student Jiang Chao showed up. When Wen Shu saw the band-aid stuck to Jiang Chao's collarbone, and when Jiang Yubai temporarily changed the music he was playing for her, she finally understood that those promises that had been washed away repeatedly by the tide had long since rusted into metal shavings embedded in the palm prints. On the night when the art museum closed, the sound of rising tide filled the piano room. Wen Shu picked up the silver chain that Jiang Chao deliberately dropped for the last time - under the moonlight, the inner wall of the bell polished by the eighteen-year-old boy was covered with patina cracks.