Slice of life / Healing / Youth / Growing Up / Wholesome Yuri / Autobiographical Fiction
On the first day of her first year of high school, Jia Zhenyue noticed Liuxia sitting by the window for the first time.
All she remembered was the girl's black hair, her excessively tidy desk, and the way her eyes quickly dropped when Jia turned around. Jia Zhenyue never thought about getting to know her. She even felt that the only reason she remembered these details was because there was nothing else to do on the first day of school.
Later, they worked together on the school magazine, waited for the bus at stop number three, and watched photographs develop beneath the dim red light of a photo shop. They also spent a long time in silence after one of them said, "It's okay."
Jia Zhenyue never understood what she was waiting for.
She was afraid of their relationship changing, yet she could never truly get used to Liuxia being absent from her life. She often understood the hints in Liuxia's words, but pretended not to. She wanted Liuxia to stay, yet always left the choice up to her.
Liuxia wasn't good at getting close, either. She was sensitive and restrained, used to folding her needs into notes, bus tickets, and the placement of objects. Again and again, she stepped closer to Jia Zhenyue, then backed away before she could be rejected.
There was no enemy they had to defeat, nor any outside force deliberately keeping them from falling in love.
They simply weren't very good at saying what they truly wanted.
High school, university, work, moving house, their parents growing old: the city's streets kept changing. Their feelings, too, gradually settled into the details of their life together, leaving behind the testing, avoidance, and missed chances.
They knew early on that they would live together someday. But it took them most of their lives to learn to ask one more question when the other said, "I'm fine."
