The Paradox of Love

Only those who dance in the darkness care about the moonlight that shines down on all living things.

When Ning Su met Lu Ji, he was the center of attention, the top student at No. 1 Middle School, the boy in the blue-and-white uniform of their school days who filled every girl's dreams. A refined gentleman, gentle as jade: he embodied it all as a teenager.

She had a crush on him in her obscure, gray youth, in the math workbook no one cared about, in every step she took toward him before retreating again.

When Lu Ji first saw Ning Su, he barely glanced her way as people cried out in admiration. Beneath the spotlight at the welcome gala, the girl walked gracefully and turned with a smile. That one glance was all it took for him to fall.

But he didn't know that, for Ning Su, the pause after that glance was a dream she'd longed for countless times in the darkness, an echo that had finally answered a wish she'd held for years.

She no longer needed to dance in the darkness, nor did she need the gentle yet distant moonlight.