一座天台，一架秋千，和迟到整整一个夏天的告白

The past few stretches of summer were balloons, a white dress, a painting torn to pieces, and a single line, "I trust you."

This stretch is a life-and-death instant on a rooftop, and a confession on a swing that came a whole summer too late.

Last time, Lu Xixiao placed his trust in Zhou Wan's hands almost without holding anything back, yet deep down she still pressed hard on that secret she didn't dare uncover.

Today, let's keep going.

Grandma's surgery fee was still far short, and Zhou Wan, out of options, had even begun to consider borrowing from a loan shark.

And precisely then, her mother came to Lu Xixiao again and threw out a condition: as long as he nodded to going abroad, that life-saving money would be hers to pay.

Lu Xixiao barely hesitated for an instant; for Zhou Wan, he agreed on the spot — even if the price was going far from home, alone.

But this summer still had a fiercer hurdle lying across it.

At school, a girl named Xue Xi, driven to a dead end by heartbreak and crushing pressure, climbed alone to the very edge of a high rooftop.

Lu Xixiao and Zhou Wan rushed up one after the other, one laying bare their pain, one their sorrow, pulling her back from the brink line by line.

At the last instant, Lu Xixiao yanked her up, but his own foot met empty air, and his whole body was about to plunge.

Zhou Wan lunged forward and gripped his arm for dear life, dragged by his weight, and the two of them hung together in mid-air.

Luckily the firefighters below had already stretched out a safety net, and after the fright both landed safely.

And it was in that very moment that Lu Xixiao told the past he'd never been willing to speak of to anyone.

Years ago, his mother, unable to bear the weight of life, fell into a deep depression, and in the end walked up onto a rooftop alone, never to return.

From then on he stumbled through growing up by himself, hiding all his loneliness beneath that careless shell of his.

It was Zhou Wan's barging in, he said, that made him feel, for the first time in his life, that someone was finally by his side.

The summer scattered as fast as it gathered; the moment the exam bell fell silent, Lu Xixiao truly was setting off.

On the night before he left, the two of them sat shoulder to shoulder on a swing, looking up at a sky full of stars.

Lu Xixiao said in a low voice: before, I guarded this patch of ground alone, cold and quiet, without even someone to talk to.

He stopped there, paused, then added, ever so softly: now that you're here, this place finally has a few shades of a home.

At last Zhou Wan couldn't hold it in, and asked the question: why exactly must you go abroad, all alone?

Lu Xixiao didn't answer head-on; he only gazed at her steadily, for so long the starlight itself seemed to dim.

Then, all at once, he said, very softly: do you want to fall in love?

The summer was drawing to a close, and he was about to travel far, yet at exactly this juncture he let out, word by word, the words he'd held in all summer.

This confession that came so late — how, in the end, will Zhou Wan take it?

And their summer, in truth, is only just about to run into its most painful stretch.

If someone had seen you through your hardest days, then had to turn and travel far in the end — could you bear to let him go?