The Rain at Seventeen Only Soaked Me

The Rain at Seventeen Only Wet Me

Synopsis

For three whole years, Liu Anqi memorized everything about Deng Zhichao: his water cup was dark blue, he wore those white sneakers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and he wrinkled his nose just before sneezing. She sat in the third row from the back of the classroom; he sat in the second row from the front. Five rows of desks and thirty-seven people stood between them, along with the longest stretch of unrequited love in her entire youth.

But Deng Zhichao never noticed her. His eyes turned to other girls, and he gave his smiles to someone else. He casually passed around the anonymous letter she had written, then laughed and said, "Your handwriting is so ugly." The essays she wrote for him earned top marks time and again, but not a single word ever truly reached him. She had burned herself down to a lamp, but the light in his world was so bright that it had no need for her tiny, flickering flame.

This is a story about being unseen. The girl in a school uniform a size too big stood beneath the eaves during the rainy season. She knew the person she loved would never look back, yet stubbornly waited in the same place, just so the spray from his footsteps might wet her toes as he ran past.

In the end, she finally understood: some people pass through your life and simply move on. In that rain, she was the only one who ever got wet.