chapter 2
chapter 2
The Weibo account chronicled a girl’s ten-year love for a boy who had never known.
Their story began in high school.
He was the class monitor; she was the invisible girl no one noticed. One rainy day, he held an umbrella over her all the way home, and her heart stirred.
One meeting at the Ferry of Wind and Ling, one glimpse of the hero Yang Guo, and a lifetime was lost.
For the next ten years, she could never drive his image from her heart.
She loved him so much, yet hid her feelings with excruciating care, never daring to confess.
[I am so ordinary, while he shines as brightly as the moon. I know the moon can never belong to me alone, but as long as I can raise my eyes and see him, I am already content beyond measure.]
And so, for ten years, she gazed up at him in silence.
She watched him leave for university in another city. Watched him fall in love with another girl. Watched him build a successful career…
In all those ten years, the only contact she could claim came after she graduated from university. Four times a year-once in spring, summer, autumn, and winter-she would travel to his city on a supposed “business trip” and invite him to share a meal.
[One home, two people, three meals, four seasons-such ordinary days are a luxury I can only dream of.]
[All I have are four meals a year. By sharing one meal in each season, I can pretend he has spent all four seasons with me.]
[He will be engaged soon. It is time for everything to end. I only pray that the girl he loves will love him as I do, and that all his seasons will be safe and joyful.]
[But before it ends, I want to see him one last time and beg him to grant me one small wish. I know I am mad, but I cannot help it. I love him so much. If I can join with him in that way, just once in this life, I will die without regret.]
[Please wish me luck. May my heart’s desire finally come true.]
The story ended there, without warning.
There were countless comments beneath the post.
Some readers wept over her devotion while speculating about exactly how she intended to “join” with the boy.
Some called her foolish and tragically devoted.
Others said she knew he was taken and still wanted to become the other woman-that she had no morals at all.
She replied, [I do not ask for your understanding. This is my life. You are not me, and you cannot know how much I love him.]
The hotel tagged in her final Weibo post was the very hotel Cheng Huaiyuan had sent me-the one where he had promised me a surprise.
I stared at the room information he had sent a month ago. A plain, unremarkable face surfaced in my mind, followed by a possibility so absurd I could hardly believe it.