奶奶走后最黑的那段夏天，和把她拉回来的人

The past few stretches of summer were balloons, a white dress, a torn painting, a life-and-death instant on a rooftop, and a confession that came too late.

This stretch is a funeral, a bicycle, and the story of someone in the deepest dark being pulled back, inch by inch, by another.

Last time, on a swing, Lu Xixiao asked Zhou Wan, ever so softly: do you want to fall in love.

Back then, his bags were packed and he was about to go abroad.

Today, let's keep going.

But fate, at just this juncture, shoved Zhou Wan off a cliff — the grandmother who was her whole life, was gone.

Grandma had lingered on her sickbed a long time, and in the end couldn't make it through this summer.

All her life, the only blood family in Zhou Wan's whole world was grandma; now that this last thread snapped, she simply caved in on herself, hollow.

She locked herself in her room, not eating, not sleeping, in tears day and night, answering no one's knock.

Lu Xixiao saw it all, his heart wrung inch by inch as if by a hand.

He was supposed to be boarding a plane for a faraway land, but at this point he went nowhere; he only kept watch at Zhou Wan's side.

He took over grandma's funeral, top to bottom, sparing no detail; even the loan shark, mindful of an old kindness, relented and took less.

And yet, even so, Zhou Wan still couldn't walk out of that shadow.

One day, missing grandma too much, she sank into a heavy sleep at home; the kitchen water boiled over, doused the stove flame, and gas spread, silent and unseen.

Just as she was about to be poisoned in her sleep, Lu Xixiao rushed in, smashed the glass with a fist, wrenched her back from death's very gate, and rushed her to the hospital through the night.

After discharge, the wound on her body was easy to treat, but the gash in her heart was slow to scab over.

Lu Xixiao preached no grand lessons; he only held her tightly in his arms, stayed day after day, and pulled her, bit by bit, up out of a bottomless well.

And so, a faint light finally broke again across Zhou Wan's pale face.

Later still, it was Zhou Wan's birthday.

She had once only mentioned, in passing, that she wanted a bicycle.

So Lu Xixiao pulled an all-nighter at the arcade, winning round after round, until he'd wrestled that bike into his hands.

Alone, he carried that heavy bike up flight after flight to the rooftop, just to place one utterly small wish of hers, steadily, before her.

Not only that — to redeem the old house Zhou Wan had nearly lost, Lu Xixiao sold the motorbike he'd guarded like his own life.

And precisely then, Zhou Wan's mother appeared once more, coldly urging her to cut ties with Lu Xixiao at once.

She said it without mercy: you and he were never from the same world.

But this time, Lu Xixiao didn't turn and leave, and Zhou Wan, at last, didn't harden her heart and push him away again.

Grandma was gone, but Lu Xixiao was always there.

In that darkest, coldest stretch of summer, it was he who, with the weight of his whole being, dragged Zhou Wan, inch by inch, back from the depths of the dark.

Only, that secret buried all summer, and that woman lying in wait, still lay across the two of them, like a string about to snap.

When someone has seen you through the deepest well, could you let go of his hand just because another says you're "not from the same world"?