Chapter 32

*The Moon Runs to Me*
The first film she’d ever shot was called *A Letter from Afar*. Director Lin Song was a Taiwanese art-house “ghost talent,” famous and famously difficult. His stories were bold; few survived mainland censorship.
*A Letter from Afar* told of a deaf-mute girl, Yu Sibei, and a Taiwanese exchange student, Xu Jiashu—two high-schoolers fumbling through first love.
Because it was set in high school, because it walked the line between innocence and something more, it never made it past the red line. It only got a small release in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Box office was modest.
But the reviews had been good. On Douban, the film sat at 8.2 with over eighty thousand ratings—a miracle for its niche.
The top review came from a user called “Deviation”:
> “I was seventeen when I first watched this. I liked a boy then, too. Three years of high school and I never took that step.
>
> Now I’m twenty-seven, still single. Rewatching it, my feelings are different. Xu Jiashu discovered that letter ten years late. I got a wedding invitation—he’s getting married.”
Another long review read:
> “You can feel the sincerity in every frame—from script to shoot to casting. This isn’t just a story about youthful regret. It’s a cross-strait homesickness, a long-distance longing. South holds the trees; north holds the thoughts.
>
> Xu Jiashu’s ‘Xu’ is Yu Sibei’s ‘Yu’ with the two-person radical pulled off. When he leaves her, she becomes a fish trapped in deep sea.”
And:
> “The film is told through Xu’s eyes. Ten years later, he finds the letter in the book and returns north.
>
> What’s revealed isn’t their simple past—but the words Yu Sibei never got to say. Being unable to speak is her life’s greatest regret. She can only write.
>
> Fate is cruel. After he moved back to Taipei, that book was buried in a box under other boxes, in a corner of a new home. Her love became the last trace she left in this world.”
And:
> “He returns ten years later, only to find regret. Yu was poor, living only with her grandmother. After her grandmother died, she dropped out to work. Life didn’t reward her. One rainy night, delivering food, she was hit by a truck.
>
> Her parents only came back to fight over compensation. She’d never been loved alive and she wasn’t loved dead.”
And:
> “Xu was the only light in her life—but even that light wasn’t hers.
>
> It’s tragic, yes. When Xu finally feels the depth of her love, she’s already gone. Ten years earlier, when she’d called to him in silence, he’d heard nothing. Ten years later, when he answered, she wasn’t there.”
And:
> “Sometimes I wonder: if he’d understood her sign at the bus stop—if he’d realized she was saying ‘I like you,’ not ‘You look good when you smile’—would anything have changed?
>
> But really, that doesn’t matter. Youth itself is regret made flesh. The answer is hidden in the sunflowers he brings at the end.”
…
By dusk, the projector threw blue light onto the white wall. Images flickered across Xie Yuncheng’s face, making his features look even colder.
Jiang Mingyi’s WeChat messages popped up on his phone.
> “She worked at a cafe after high school. Then she apparently repeated a year, sat the art exam, and got into Central Drama. I heard she was top of her major that year.”
> “You’re both in the capital. Her school isn’t far from yours. You’re telling me you never met once?”
Zhongxi sat in Dongcheng; Qingda in Haidian. Not far, on a map. But it might as well have been two worlds.
He didn’t answer. His fingers turned a piece of candy wrapper over and over, the plastic crackling in his palm.
At some point, he’d picked up a habit of smoking. He didn’t remember exactly when—it might have been during the worst of the fights with his mother, or the days when problems at work refused to budge.
Maybe it had started when the mint candies ran out and he couldn’t find a replacement. One night he’d lit a cigarette. The bite of nicotine dulled things.
Mint had been different. It had spread cool across his tongue, burned his throat just a little—and left a faint, inexplicable bitterness.
Like that night by the river, when she’d looked up at him and placed a tiny candy in his palm, and something had shifted in his chest.
Fireworks had burst over their heads. Her eyes had been bright as she smiled—brighter than the sparks.
…
The projector hummed. The soundtrack swelled, drums edging toward something raw. The story lurched downward.
Rain beat against the screen. Cars passed in blurs of light. The night glowed like a cage.
In a yellow delivery jacket, Yu Sibei rode her electric bike through it all. Rain poured off her helmet, stripped the color from her face. At a turn, she swerved to avoid a cat and crashed. Her hearing aid flew off into the shrubbery.
She struggled up, skin scraped bloody. Under the cold wash of streetlights and rain, she groped through the bushes and finally found the cracked device. She slapped it back into place and tapped it twice.
The city’s roar squeezed into a single piercing hum.
Then:
Silence.
The world cut its sound.
People could argue over whether Qin Sang’s acting was “good.” There was no arguing with the way she stood there—drenched, spattered with mud, cheek raw where it had hit the pavement.
She slapped at her ear again and again, panic and confusion warring on her face. She looked like someone who’d taken a wrong turn into this gaudy city—lost and unseen. Tears and rain blurred together.
Cars kept passing. No one stopped.
She dragged her bike up and began to push it along, limping into the rain.
Headlights flared from behind.
She raised a hand instinctively against the glare. The horn never reached her.
White swallowed the screen.
The bike lay on its side, wheel still spinning. Blood spread under the rainwater, turning the gutter red.
Far off, neon lit the city in strange, beautiful colors. Right here, everything had gone quiet.
The girl’s body lay on the asphalt. Blood seeped under her; rain ran in silver lines down her face. Her eyes stared up at the blank dark sky.
Slowly, even that last bit of light left them.
Yu Sibei died alone on a rainy night nine years ago. Her funeral fell on her birthday. No one remembered.
Her parents came back to cry and shout—only to argue over money.
“So pitiful,” neighbors said, shaking their heads. “She was only eighteen.”
Her life had barely started. She’d never gotten to really see the world before it ended.
Her death was a stone dropped into a lake—barely a ripple.
Beyond her, the city’s lights went on, restless as ever.
Inside the bus in the film, Xu Jiashu sat where they’d once ridden together. The scene cut to that bus stop from ten years before—when she’d stood under the shelter, signing to him as the bus pulled up.
He’d asked, “What does that mean?”
She’d smiled, taken his palm, and traced characters with her finger.
“You look good when you smile.”
Now, watching the recording of that moment, he finally understood it had been something else.
“I like you.”
He broke down, sobs shaking his shoulders.
…
Watching, Xie Yuncheng felt a prickling under his ribs—like a fine needle pressing in.
More messages from Jiang:
> “Heard she was really broke. Applied for student loans *and* poverty aid.”
Her path and Yu Sibei’s overlapped in too many places. Eighteen and out of school. Debts on her shoulders.
> “She was crazy hardworking. Classes by day, jobs at night. Always coming back to the dorm last. Doesn’t talk much. Kind of like you—keeps to herself.”
Like him?
He thought of the three-year high school folder in his memories—the one he hadn’t opened until that reunion message popped up. While he’d complained of pressure and expectations, she’d been on the verge of losing everything.
> “Oh, and the aid program she used? That’s your family’s ‘Lantern’ fund, right?”
The Lantern Program—Old Master Xie’s scholarship for students of drama, traditional theatre, dance. Meant to support kids with talent and no money.
Xie Yuncheng blinked.
On the wall, Xu Jiashu knelt to lay sunflowers on a grave.
The camera held on the flowers when he left. Long after his silhouette was gone, they remained—the only bright spot in a world washed in gray.
Sunflowers meant warmth and life. Meant the sun itself—bright and unyielding.
The first time they’d met, he’d brought a bouquet of sunflowers as a clumsy gift.
Back then, they’d only been a wish.
In her silent world, he’d been a fleeting strip of light.
Small, but real.
His thumb smoothed over the edge of his phone. The movie faded to black. The credits scrolled.
He swallowed once, hard.
In that long, dark stretch of her life, he realized, there had been one tiny moment when he’d lit a lantern without even knowing it.