summer storm

One day at noon, with a gentle breeze, the morning light shattered and spilled into the windows of the ward.

Xu Beishan was sitting by the hospital bed with his sleeves rolled up to his arms, peeling apples for his younger sister.

The girl sitting on the hospital bed was thin and lonely, with a strong sick look on her face, she was chatting with someone with her mobile phone, and she was smiling happily.

For various reasons, my younger sister has been a frequent visitor to the hospital since she was a child, and Xu Beishan has never seen her make any too good friends.Xu Beishan guessed that it might be because my sister was too young to see parting too much, so she was naturally pessimistic and resistant to all long-term relationships.

"Brother, is my heart likely to stop beating at any time? Just like my mother." Xu Beishan still remembers how his sister was sitting in front of the window sill in a daze when he was a child. Death is such a big proposition, whether it is for him or It's too heavy for my sister.

"If I want to undergo chemotherapy like my mother and lose all my hair, then I don't want to do this." The girl in the memory wiped away her tears and choked out such a sentence for a long time.

click.The complete apple peels swirled and fell on the plate. Xu Beishan patiently cut the apples into slices and brought them to his sister.

"Hahaha, Zhou Zhiyan is too funny, why didn't he use a loudspeaker to tell the whole school that you are his boyfriend!"

The cartoon character pendant hanging under the pink phone case flickered. Xu Beishan didn't disturb his sister's chat. He glanced at the smile on the girl's face, and the corners of her mouth curved slightly.

After packing up the rubbish and taking them out of the ward, Xu Beishan heard his sister's laughter coming from the door of the ward that was about to close.

"Xin Xin, the male god you finally caught up with, you have to be more confident!"

"What are you afraid of, Zhou Zhiyan is handsome, and you are not bad..."

Xin Xin.

Is this the name of a friend my sister made?

To make his sister so happy, a silhouette of a girl who was about the same age as his sister appeared in Xu Beishan's mind.

Naturally, Xu Beishan felt grateful for this girl he had never met before. During this period of time, the smiles on his sister's face had obviously increased. He thought, it was probably because of making good friends.

Good friend...Xu Beishan lowered his head, feeling inexplicably uncomfortable.

If he can live normally in school, his younger sister must be a bright and lively scenery, and she will have many friends.

It's not like now, if you can hold it in your hand, you don't dare to hold it tightly?

The chirping of cicadas in summer rang out outside the window tirelessly.

The girl who was unwilling to undergo chemotherapy finally shaved off her hair. After the snow fell, it was another year of warm spring and flowers blooming. After her disease was controlled, Xu Beishan sat on the cold bench outside the operating room on a rainy night in the next summer.

The words of the attending doctor echoed in my ears, those spreading cancer cells were like unkillable monsters, and my sister's vitality was almost exhausted in the repeated struggles.

What a similar summer day, like a Möbius ring, without a day out.

Xu Beishan clearly remembered the night when he heard Ruan Xin's full name for the first time.

When he opened the door and entered the ward, he saw his sister who was pulling out the infusion tube and sitting by the window. When he rushed over to reprimand him, he saw the tears in her eyes.

"Zhou Zhiyan and Ruan Xin are breaking up, why?!"

Who is Zhou Zhiyan and who is Ruan Xin?Xu Beishan didn't know anything about these things, but he hadn't seen his sister cry for a long time. He didn't know from which day, his sister seemed to have learned not to show her vulnerable side to him.

"Brother, Ruan Xin likes Zhou Zhiyan so much, he is so nice—"

Ruan Xin...Xu Beishan vaguely remembered that his sister seemed to have a friend named Xin Xin.

"Ruan Xin's family is warm and happy. His parents are very loving. He has many friends who are very popular. He is also good-looking. He treats people very well. I don't understand why Zhou Zhiyan broke up with him!"

The younger sister, who was out of breath from crying, grabbed the corner of his shirt and gasped next to his ear, as if she wanted to pour out all the pain she had suffered in these years.

"Brother, brother, do you know Ruan Xin? He is my good friend, very good! He is a sophomore this year, studying journalism and communication, and likes animation like me. We met under the forum post. His My boyfriend is Zhou Zhiyan, I helped him a lot when he was chasing Zhou Zhiyan in high school, let me tell you, they really match—"

The mobile phone on the window sill was lit by the girl, and Xu Beishan saw that his sister anxiously turned out a group photo, in which two young boys hugged each other, smiling happily.

……

Swish, sway, sway... The leaves outside the window sway, amidst the sound of cicadas, the drizzle dances.

That night, my younger sister was nestled in his arms, telling the story of a boy whose life was completely different from hers with that kind of full of vigor and sadness.

How could Xu Beishan not understand why his sister was sad.

Everything she can't have, the beauty that is all bet on another person, turns out to be just a phantom that can be broken at any time.

It's just that she doesn't have the chance to watch the beautiful story again, but those young people can start over at any time.

In the sound of rain, my sister closed her eyes tiredly.

Xu Beishan patted his sister on the shoulder and heard her weak voice.

"Brother, do you like boys? I knew it a long time ago."

"..."

"Ah."

Xu Beishan replied gently.

"Brother, if one day I really leave and you can't find someone you like, can you chat with Ruan Xin?"

"I know this request is very strange, but I always feel that Zhou Zhiyan is not worthy of Ruan Xin's liking."

"My brother is the best person in the world, and Ruan Xin is also a very good person."

……

"Brother, I think you will like him, and Ruan Xin will also like you."

Xu Beishan didn't say yes to such a childish and willful request. He just continued to pat his sister's shoulder silently. In other words, his sister's pessimistic and sober prediction of his own death made Xu Beishan no longer want to think about anything else. Something about love.

After an unknown amount of time, just when Xu Beishan thought his sister had fallen asleep, the girl spoke again.

The voice was soft and trembling.

"I'm very selfish. I don't want my brother to be alone in the future, and I don't want my brother's future partner to be someone I've never met."

"But I know, brother, I can't decide all of this."

"Just like Ruan Xin's life, it has nothing to do with me..."

……

Tick.

The last raindrops bounced off the window sill. In this hot and humid rainy season, Ruan Xin broke up with Zhou Zhiyan in the rainstorm.

And Xu Nanxi left this world.

Before the end of the summer, Xu Beishan read all the chat records of Little Lemon and Ruan Xin on his sister's phone, but he didn't reply a single word from Ruan Xin who was constantly looking for Little Lemon.

Xu Beishan also has unreasonable selfish resentment, for example, he resents this boy whom his sister said is very good, why in the last days of his sister's life, he wants to end the beauty in her eyes with a tragedy.

It doesn't make any sense, but everything doesn't make sense.

Just like many years later, when Ruan Xin and Xu Beishan met by chance at the Green Banyan Temple, they never dreamed that he was not the one who discovered Xu Beishan first.

Xu Beishan had already seen the man standing in front of the incense burner, and recognized the old silhouette in the photo.

I remembered what my sister said to him, the promise that I couldn't fulfill with my good friend.

——Ruan Xin, every summer, we have to go to the Green Banyan Temple to offer a stick of incense.