Letters from the Rainy Past

[Small Town Literature | Bittersweet Slow-Burn | Mutual Redemption | 1V1 | Realistic | HE]

[Gentle & Resilient x Decadent & World-weary]

At seventeen, Pu Yu transferred to a remote town in the south.

There, she met Yuan Su.

He was once the most brilliant “favored son of heaven” in the entire town.

Now, he had fallen from grace, and everyone avoided him like the plague.

Except for Pu Yu.

An old street, a repair shop.

She and he looked at each other across a floor of mess.

“Don’t keep coming here.”

“Why?”

“…It’s dirty.”

Pu Yu didn’t answer.

The next day, she appeared at the repair shop’s entrance again at the same time.

An alley, deep at its end.

Pu Yu’s hand holding the iodine trembled slightly as tears fell silently.

“Yuan Su,” her voice was thick with a sob, “let’s study and get out of here together, okay?”

The girl stood against the light, her school uniform billowing in the wind like a butterfly trying to break free from this desolate town.

He abruptly looked away, his chest heaving violently.

In those eyes that were always dark and gloomy, something seemed to ignite.

Later, the cicadas’ chirping faded away.

He disappeared from the town’s summer along with that repair shop.

It wasn’t until a winter night in the north, when heavy snow covered the streets, that she finally understood the secret hidden within those twenty-one letters.