The Rain at Seventeen Only Soaked Me

Liu Anqi spent three whole years memorizing everything about Deng Zhichao—his water cup was dark blue, he wore those white sneakers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and he always wrinkled his nose before sneezing. She sat in the third row from the back of the classroom; he sat in the second row from the front. Between them were five rows of desks and thirty-seven people—and also the longest crush of her entire adolescence. But Deng Zhichao never saw her. His gaze fell on other girls, his smiles were given to others, and he casually passed around the anonymous letters she wrote and handed them to classmates, laughing as he said, "Her handwriting is so ugly." The essays she wrote for him earned high marks countless times, yet not a single word of them was ever truly seen by him. She burned herself down into a lamp, but the light in his world was too bright—so bright that it had no need for her faint flame. This is a story about being unseen. That girl, wearing a uniform one size too big, stood under the eaves during the rainy season. She knew full well the person she liked would not turn back, yet she still stubbornly waited in place—just so the splashes from his running past could wet the tips of her shoes. Later, she finally understood: some people are just passersby, and the rain that fell soaked only her, from beginning to end. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: The Rain at Seventeen Only Soaked Me — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠