她瞒着他用了他，他却说“我都信你”

The past few stretches of summer were balloons, a white dress, an easel — two people inching closer.

This stretch is a painting torn to pieces, and one line, "I trust you" — tender enough to break your heart.

Last time, Zhou Wan moved into the Lu home and lived side by side with Lu Xixiao, and he even realized the one his brush most wanted to hold onto was her.

Today, let's keep going.

One day, Lu Xixiao solemnly placed a carefully finished painting into Zhou Wan's hands.

That painting hid all the feelings he'd never spoken, and Zhou Wan cradled it, unable to let it go.

But this very scene landed, to the inch, in her mother's eyes.

To force these two to sever cleanly, her mother tore the painting to pieces right in front of Zhou Wan.

Zhou Wan's heart split open inch by inch; she crouched down and gathered the scraps back off the floor, one piece at a time.

Before dawn the next day, her mother coldly ordered her to move out of the Lu home.

And of all days, this was Lu Xixiao's most crucial one — he was to take his art portfolio to see a professor of great weight.

Zhou Wan's heart dropped hard; instinct told her her mother had most likely tampered with that portfolio.

She rushed back and turned the place upside down, and sure enough, deep in her own cabinet, dug out the quietly swapped original.

Zhou Wan cast everything aside, grabbed the real portfolio, and ran all out, pressing it into Lu Xixiao's hands at the very last moment.

Later, Lu Xixiao swept the championship in a final.

He was so happy he nearly leapt up, and the first person to surface in his mind was, still, Zhou Wan.

But when he finally found her, he stood as if nailed to the spot.

Zhou Wan had been cornered and beaten bloody by a few thugs, her head split, her foot too hurt to lift.

Shocked and pained, Lu Xixiao called the police on the spot and, eyes red, dressed her wounds bit by bit.

Having hidden it so long, that thing had long left Zhou Wan unable to breathe.

She finally rasped it out: at the start, I calculated everything before getting close to you. I used you.

She was all but certain Lu Xixiao would hear it and turn to leave without a moment's hesitation.

But he didn't.

He only gazed at her, steady, and said, one word at a time: it's all right.

He said, from now on, whatever you do, I trust you; you needn't explain a thing to me.

Later still, Lu Xixiao slowly discovered that Zhou Wan worked alone by day, kept watch over her hospitalized grandma alone by night, and swallowed all the bitterness by herself in silence.

He didn't ask a single extra question; he only pulled her an inch closer behind him.

Lu Xixiao gave his trust so cleanly, so completely — yet in Zhou Wan's chest, an even heavier secret was still pressed down hard.

She never managed to say the words: the woman who kept driving her into a corner was her own birth mother.

This summer, the two of them leaned ever closer, while fate cinched ever tighter around her.

If someone were willing to trust you this defenselessly, while you still hid a secret that couldn't see the light, would you dare to take hold of that trust?