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Although my memories of China are flimsy, stretched almost translucent over a total of five summer breaks from my childhood, I always have this feeling that my bones will know the place, even when I don’t.
We’ll have you forgetting about—Leah, right?” He looks to me for confirmation. I beam. “Yeah.” “We’ll have you moving on from her in no time,” he says with a wink. “Who said I wanted to?” Cyrus says flatly.
Then I’ll burst out laughing, long and loud, right in his face. Why would I ever like you, Cyrus? You ruined my life, remember? And I’ll cite his long list of crimes, starting from when we were children, while the spectators shrink back from him in horror. He’ll finally come close to understanding how I felt on the staircase, except he’ll actually be guilty. He’ll deserve all the humiliation hurtling his way.
Ouch, that is so cruel. For a minute, I thought I'd hate this character if she actually goes through with this. Making someone fall in love as a cruel joke - no way.
“What’s his problem?” Oliver asks me, following my gaze. I shake my head. Resist the urge to say, Everything. “No idea.”
there’s just something about his aura that screams, I go straight home after school to mope over the state of the world instead of planning out cute movie nights with the girl I like.
“Why wouldn’t everyone like you?” Maybe because I have nothing of value to offer? Because I care too much about my appearance, and I overthink everything, and I can be annoying and dumb and indecisive, and I don’t have the slightest clue what I’m doing with my life? Because I have no personality outside of my flaws?
“Took you all long enough,” Wang Laoshi barks, raising his blue flag over his head in a somewhat menacing manner. “We’re running two-and-a-half minutes behind schedule.
Barks with laughter. Omg, if this guy knew how late my sister makes us. Lol.
“I don’t believe that books are the cure to everything, necessarily, but it’s like—when you’re feeling unwell, and you receive a diagnosis, and you’re so relieved because now you realize that it wasn’t all in your head, that there’s a name for what you’re experiencing. On a bad day, books offer a language for your pain, and on a good day, books remind you just how precious your life is.
Sobs 😭 #facts
“All right,” I say. “Let’s do this.” He simply nods, expressionless, then leans his head against the window, his back turned to me. But in the reflection spilling over the dark glass, I think I see the faintest of smiles tug at his lips.
I narrow my eyes at him. “What did you call me just now?” “Hm?” “Qin ai de, or whatever that was,” I say. “It sounded like an insult.” “It means my worst enemy,” he says casually without even turning around,
I loved him twice for this. 😉🫠😍 Frenemies to lovers is the best trope! He said it so affectionately - aaah!!! #if-you-know-you-know
“Like, I don’t know—maybe the number of flowers is important. Maybe we should be counting them, or the petals—” “I don’t think this is one of those he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not situations,” Cyrus says. “I wouldn’t need to count petals to guess whether someone loves me. I’d know that they do,”
GAAAAAAHHHH!!!! 🥹
“But also, like, we couldn’t find half the things on the list. We looked everywhere for the jackfruit, and every time we thought we’d spotted it at last, it turned out to be durian.” “Well,” Cyrus says casually, locking eyes with me, “if you’re ever searching for shampoo, we know just the place.” Laughter springs out of me before I have time to stifle it. It’s my real laugh—an embarrassingly loud, honking sound that would be put to better use as a fire alarm. I clamp my mouth shut, my skin heating at the slip in my composure, but Cyrus is grinning at me.
Leah. You remind me of the greatest sculptors, who can turn marble into the impression of billowing silk, the coldest stone into something soft. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that everything you touch turns beautiful. The world becomes beautiful, as long as there’s you.
He’s the only person on this trip—no, the only person I know, other than my own parents—who’s seen every single form I’ve shape-shifted through in the past few years. He knows, and right now, it’s more of a relief than anything.
“What are you used to, then?” “You know. Being childhood enemies.” His smile feels like a warning, but it’s not the kind that precedes a prank. It’s too sincere, his voice dropping low as he says, “I’ll keep being your enemy, if that’s what you’d prefer.” His eyes drop down too, drifting to my lips with such weight and intent that I can almost feel the ghost brush of his gaze. “I can be whatever you want me to be.”
When joy arrives, it catches me off guard. It sneaks up slowly through my rib cage like poppies pushing through soil after the rain, and then it’s there, everywhere, warmth beating in my chest, spreading down to my fingertips as I sink back in the sunlight. It’s like I’m thawing. I’ve always been used to happiness in snatches—happiness that felt stolen, happiness that was hard-won,
☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
The little girl who didn’t wince at the sound of her own laughter, who plucked wild daisies and braided them in her hair, who saw a secluded garden and imagined hidden realms, who wore sparkly tiaras and waved around heart-shaped wands, picked out dresses because she loved the color pink and not just because she liked how the material clung to her body. The girl I was, the girl I had forgotten.
😭 🥺 Omg, Ann Liang - the writer you are! 💖
Xindong. Another new word I’ve picked up on the trip. It means, literally, that the heart is moved by something—or more often, someone. A sensation firmer than butterflies in your stomach but more fleeting than love. Throughout the trip, I’ve felt my heart move multiple times, and they were all because of Cyrus.
“You have a nice voice.” He pauses. “You must be tired.” “What?” “When you’re tired,” he says, “you forget to hate me.” “I forget to hate you a lot of the time,” I whisper.
😭💖🍿
Or, if that fails, you can call me,” I say before I can stop myself. God help me. The desire to comfort him is so much stronger than the desire to destroy him now. “And I’ll sing advertising jingles to you until they’re permanently stuck in your head. I have a beautiful singing voice, you know. Very throaty.” His smile is careful, as if he doesn’t want to take the offer too seriously. “Is that a threat?” “It’s a promise.” I meet his surprised gaze, hold it, my heart picking up its pace inside my chest like it’s in a hurry to go somewhere.
Maybe I don’t have to be the outcast, or the model—I can just focus on being a good person surrounded by other good people in beautiful places, and that’s more than enough.
Cyrus is waiting there on the stone pavement, and as our gazes meet for the first time since I snuck out of his hotel room this morning, he smiles at me, sincere and almost shy. It’s the kind of smile that makes you forget everything. The sun. The sky. Gravity. Every major and minor hurt I’ve ever endured. Every name that isn’t his.
If there are butterflies in my stomach, their wings must be on fire. Revenge or desire? Since when did the two feel so similar?
“I never wanted you to hate me,” he whispers. “I never wanted you to leave. I only meant to tease you until you truly noticed me. I would wait every day for the moment you walked into class with your polka-dot socks and your cute sweaters and pigtails—it was like my day didn’t even begin until I saw you. I loved the games you invented and the stories you came up with and your laugh, how it bubbled out of you and you could hear it from down the corridor. All I could think about was you, all the time, and how funny and sweet and beautiful you were—”
O.M.G. 🫠💘
“You’re in love with me?” I whisper. “Since when?” His smile is wry. “Only the past seven years.”
YES!!! YES!! YES!!!!!
This whole time?” I ask him, almost afraid to believe it. “Of course,” he says, watching me intently, his dark eyes serious, his hair tousled and soft around the sharp lines of his face. “There’s never been anybody else for me. There never will be.”
Screaming. Feat kicking in the air. Hugging plushies. 😁🥰🤧😭🥹
And even though he’s far from the first boy I’ve kissed, it feels as if he is; the others simply don’t count compared to him. He kisses me not like he wants to own me, but like he’s mine, and he’s desperate to prove it.
“Qin ai de.” I recognize the words. “Did you just call me your worst enemy?” He smiles against my lips. “I was lying.” “What?” “Qin ai de doesn’t mean my worst enemy,” he says. “It means my love.”
AAAAAHHHHHH!!!! I knew it!
Oliver throws him an incredulous glance. “Let’s face it, bro, it’s not as if there was any chance you didn’t like her. Like, you can barely stand up when you’re in her presence. You look at her like you’re seeing the moon for the first time or some shit. It’s kind of disgustingly obvious.” “Thanks for that,” Cyrus says, but despite the self-consciousness creeping into his voice, he doesn’t deny any of it. “Anytime, bro.” I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop from smiling too wide.
The delight of finding a real, true friend, someone you can talk to about anything, no matter how serious or silly.
💖🥹
But how can I ever be truly loved and known if I’m always hiding?
Cyrus’s voice is serious and deep as gravity when he slides his long fingers through mine, intertwining them like a vow, and says, “Why not? It’s very easy to fall in love with you, Leah. The easiest thing in the world.”
“So it’s not anlian,” he says, his eyes dark and intent on me, and though the rest of his sentence goes unspoken, I hear it as clearly as if he had whispered it into my ear: I don’t love you in the darkness; I love you in the light.
“This is going to sound silly, but I feel like a princess,” I admit, touching the delicate silk sash around my waist. “Like, I want to drink from a fancy teacup and then take a bath filled with rose petals and walk very slowly down the stairs where my lover awaits below.” “You should’ve spoken sooner about the rose petals; Oliver and I collected a whole basket of them at our last hotel room. I’m definitely free to wait below a flight of stairs though,” he says. “I can wait as long as you’d like.”
Distracted by the image of those two gathering fallen petals and complaining about the basketfull it produced. 😁🤣
but I don’t get the same self-conscious, ready-to-hide feeling I used to. It’s like my brain has undergone a makeover too, those dark spots of doubt brushed away and replaced by almost obnoxiously optimistic thoughts. Maybe they’re staring because they also think this style suits me. Maybe they’re admiring how the pins glow in my hair. Maybe they too want to experience the thrill of spinning around in traditional robes.
This is a book about romance. This is a book about modeling and being a pretty Asian. No... this is a book about mental health and discovering yourself as a person. Wow. Ann Liang, you are truly amazing. 👏 🥰🫡 This is why we love your stories so much.
“No, you’re not weak at all. If something costs more than it’s worth, you let it go. If anybody dares make you feel bad for it, then screw them.”
there are a lot of horrible people and horrible situations, but you can’t keep holding on to that for the rest of your life. You have to believe that there are people who will genuinely like you, and care about you, and worry over you when something’s wrong.”
Cyrus shakes his head. “No fantasy could ever live up to you,” he whispers. “Nothing can compare to how it feels to look up and see you there.
He pulls back just slightly to tilt his head, his eyes gleaming. “Are you asking me out?” “Maybe,” I tease. “There is a nice restaurant I’ve always wanted to try down the street from my house …” “Let’s go there,” he says instantly. “Cyrus, you don’t even know what restaurant it is—” “Doesn’t matter,” he tells me, “as long as I’m going with you.”
