Half a Lifelong Romance

I want you to know there’s someone in this world who’s yours always. Please know that, forever and wherever. Yours, always

Oh, it’s not important. It’s just a glove!” Manzhen spoke lightly, but in fact she was upset. Sometimes she focused so hard on little things she was almost small-minded. But Shijun, when he looked back at it all, treasured this trait of hers. Manzhen was the kind of person who, once something came into her possession, cherished it till it became, in her eyes, the best thing ever. He knew, because he’d once been hers.

All the times he’d dreamed of seeing her again—it was happening now, but was utterly unlike anything he’d imagined. A feeling he could not describe, his mind blank, his heart dazed.

Maybe a love like that came to a person only once in a lifetime? Once was enough, maybe.

She’d seen it clearly all along. It was as she said: they couldn’t go back. Now he understood why he’d felt trapped in a daze today. He’d been fighting against time. Their last parting had been so sudden, so unexpected, they’d not had a chance to say goodbye. When they walked out of this room today, they’d be saying goodbye forever. It was completely clear, like death.

Love is not passion, perhaps. Not yearning either, but the experience of time, the part of life that accumulates over the months and years.

Great sorrow and great happiness are, in this regard, similar. They both require distance from others.

I think I’ve seen you somewhere before, but I don’t remember where.

Tsuizhi, still embarrassed, kept looking through the flaps while he explained. It looked as if she’d lost interest in what he was saying. “Uh-oh,” she muttered. “I hope we haven’t gone past my house.” Meanwhile, Shijun was thinking to himself, Tsuizhi is so annoying. She’s always been like this.

Shijun wasn’t in the habit of assessing a girl on some sort of beauty scale; he simply liked the way she looked.

Shijun, I want you to know there’s someone in this world who’s yours always. Please know that, forever and wherever. Yours, always.

It’s just that I keep turning anything I see, anything I hear, into a reason to think of you.

And she had understood. Her face was perfectly calm, but he could see that she was very, very happy. The world was suddenly bathed in light that made everything transparent, all of it real and precise. Never had he felt so clear-minded. It was like sitting down at an exam, and seeing right away that he knew every answer—he was that excited and, at the same time, strangely calm.

He had no desire to discuss Manzhen with anyone: talking about it would only miss the point, like scratching a shoe to get at an itchy spot underneath the leather.

Fundamental truth is unyielding, like a mountain.

She’d asked him, back then, when he’d first started liking her. “The moment I first saw you,” he’d replied, of course. His feelings were running so high then, he’d have believed anything. He was certain he was not lying. But in fact, the moment when he first saw her was not all that clear in his mind.