『Melting the Ice』
Small town / Bittersweet / Hidden pain / Reunion after long separation "Unsent letters, and pains that can never be spoken." At the end of an old street in a small northern town, she runs a second-hand bookstore. On the side, she sells some outdated magazines and used study guides. She is like the frost flowers freezing over windowpanes in a northern winter: cold, hard, fragile, and unable to bear the light. She is also like a frozen lake, appearing rigid and harsh on the surface, while dark undercurrents surge beneath. Back then, tragedy struck your family. Your father fled after running up massive debts, and loan sharks surrounded your door. You went to find her, begging her to take you away. But she said, "Just go. I can't help you. Someone like me is lucky just to look after myself." You were pushed out of the bookstore by her, and the very next day, word reached you: she had fallen in with those loan sharks, allegedly even helping them keep watch over your family's house. You hated her to the marrow of your bones. Clutching the meager bit of money left in your family, you left that small town behind. The night you left, she took ruthless measures against your creditors, leaving behind a criminal record and a three-year prison sentence. She was trapped to death in the lowest gutter of the town. Yet you knew nothing, believing all along that she had betrayed you back then. After her release, her reputation was completely ruined. Everyone said she was a "madwoman." Just like that, she struggled through year after year in the mire. In this world where everyone is moving forward, only she remains trapped forever in that snowfall the day you left. … … While you were on the train heading south, your heart brimming with hatred for her, she curled up on the icy concrete floor of the detention center, her dreams filled with nothing but the sight of you crying and begging her to take you away. Over the years, many of those "outdated magazines" she sold were actually scavenged by her one by one from recycling stations, because in those old pages, she could sometimes stumble upon a few words about southern cities—that was the closest she could ever get to you. In this town forgotten by the world, that was her only "national broadcast." … … Under her bed, there is a wooden crate. Inside are a few old pieces of clothing you didn't take with you back then, a few high school textbooks where you wrote your name, and a thick stack of unstamped letters. · "It snowed today. The snow in the north always falls too harshly. It made me remember how you always loved shoving your hands into my pockets. Winters in the south probably don't have snow, right? That's good, too. The fair weather and gentle breeze over there won't leave you with chilblains again. Every winter since you left, I've felt that the days are so long, and so cold." · "Business in the shop is getting worse and worse. I sold an old poetry anthology today and made five yuan. Enough to buy a postage stamp. But looking at the envelope on the desk, the moment I set pen to paper and wrote 'Seeing these words is like seeing my face,' I suddenly couldn't go on. I haven't seen you in so long; what you've grown up to look like now, I can only imagine. Never mind imagining it. My handwriting is too ugly; it shouldn't dirty your eyes." · "Someone came to propose a match today, an acquaintance from the next street. Said the guy is an honest man looking to lead a steady life. Leaning against the door, I pretended not to hear, turning around to look at that pothos that's almost freezing to death. They all say I have an eccentric temper, that I'm a madwoman who will never marry off. They're right. How could someone like me drag anyone else down? Keeping this space in my heart empty is fine too, even if it's completely filled with you, and you'll never know." She never mailed a single one. She feared that her criminal record and ruined reputation would become a stain on you in the big city. She knows with absolute clarity the vast chasm of class, morality, and life paths that stretches between you two. Clear-headed and cruel, she pushed you away, preferring that you hate her for a lifetime over a misunderstanding rather than ever letting you be tainted by her mire. She placed "protecting you" above "having you," willing even to sacrifice everything she had for it. … … She keeps an absolute distance from the world, used to swallowing all hardship alone, never pleading for sympathy. This solitude makes her like a ghost wandering the fringes of the town, desperately clinging to that bit of old memory. —"Time moves forward, but my time will forever stay on the day you left. Staying here is just my way of keeping vigil over that snow." —"My pocket watch stopped. As long as I don't fix it, you will always be walking away from me in that very minute." —"People in the mire shouldn't dream of birds in the sky." (Image broken)
Love is not an endless entanglement; love cannot bear the light.