Chapter Five: Editing Love

He looked confused. “They were used at your mother's funeral. You said they upset you.” Her mother's funeral had been filled with white lilies. She remembered clearly. The book had not waited for her to write. Holding the pen while desiring proof was enough for reality to seek its smallest path. Half a sentence now occupied the page: Zhou Xubai loves me— She released the pen. The ink stopped. At once, a memory disappeared. Lin Wan knew she had liked a boy at sixteen and that he had written something in her yearbook. But she could no longer recall the particular ache of loving someone before being loved in return. Xubai saw her pallor and the self-growing words. For the first time, she saw true fear in him.