The Nineteenth Fallen Leaf
In her third year after joining Dingxin Law Firm, Chen Qi received a rather unusual criminal case.
The case had been assigned to her by a legal aid organization, and she did not take it lightly. After obtaining all the case files and video materials from the Qizhou police station, she stayed up through the night reviewing and organizing them, conducting visits and investigations and gathering evidence. She also made an appointment with the detention center in advance for a meeting with her client.
The other party was a boy of only nineteen years old, surnamed Yu, with the single given name Lang.
She had seen his photograph in the materials and was surprised by his striking appearance.
But after learning more about his circumstances, she began to sympathize with him.
He had been born in a small town called Luhe, in the northern part of Qizhou.
He had a violent father who drank heavily and was addicted to gambling, and who treated beating his mother as an everyday occurrence. According to nearby villagers, they could hear his father's curses and his mother's cries almost every day, along with the sounds of things being thrown and smashed.
His mother was in poor health and suffered from epilepsy, with attacks occurring at irregular intervals. In her younger years, she had worked at a factory for several years, but later, in an accident, two fingers on her left hand were crushed by a machine. Disabled and suffering from epilepsy, she could only stay at home from then on, cooking and working the land.
Because of his parents' discord and their financial hardship, Yu Lang's childhood was not a happy one.
But he seemed to have always firmly believed that he possessed the ability to create happiness, or to make his way toward it. He devoted himself to his studies, and from the age of ten-something, he had already been finding all kinds of odd jobs after school by every possible means, saving his money bit by bit until small amounts accumulated into something substantial.
Several elders from his village affectionately called him Xiao Lang, without exception praising him:
“This child is such a good one.”
“He's hardworking and sensible. Whenever he sees us, he always greets us.”
“He does his homework especially fast. He can finish it at school, so there's no need for his family to worry about him at all. And whenever we're busy, after he comes home from school and has nothing to do, he even takes the initiative to help us with the work.”
No one could have imagined that something like this would happen. There was nothing but regret in their voices.
An old white-haired man took a sip of tea and sighed. “His old man was wrong in a thousand ways, ten thousand ways, but he still shouldn't have killed him.”
“Shouldn't he have died?”
The girl beside him, who had been silently wiping the table, suddenly spoke.
Chen Qi noticed her and asked her about Yu Lang.
She said she had been Yu Lang's classmate in middle school, but she had failed to get into high school, so she had dropped out and stayed home doing odd jobs.
“Yu Lang was a really good person.” Her name was Song Xiaoyue, and she had shared a desk with Yu Lang for half a semester. “One time, I got my period and stained the chair. The other boys saw it and made fun of me. They carried my chair away and passed it around, refusing to give it back to me. Yu Lang snatched it back, then went to the bathroom, fetched water, and wiped the chair clean for me.”
As she spoke, her eyes reddened.
“He worked so hard. He was always number one. Our homeroom teacher especially liked him and often praised him in front of the whole class, saying that he was destined to make something of himself.”
She had thought so too.
After graduating from middle school, he went to the county seat for high school. Song Xiaoyue continued to secretly keep track of him. When she learned that he had done very well on the gaokao and had been admitted to a medical university in the provincial capital of Su Province, she felt happy from the bottom of her heart.
Because back in middle school, he had written in an essay that he wanted to become a doctor.
A month after the start of university, she was at home shelling pea pods. Her mother was outside the door, greeting someone. When she heard the words “Xiao Lang,” she hurried outside.
When the boy saw her, he smiled as well and greeted her.
She asked him, “Why are you back?”
He said, “Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up, and the school is holding a sports meet, so I came back early.”
She asked him again, “Is Jinling fun?”
He said, “It's been busy since the semester started, so I haven't really had a chance to look around. But the area around the university is already very beautiful and prosperous.”
Her heart yearned for it, yet she was also glad that she had not gone into the city to find work, but had stayed in the town instead. This way, she could see Yu Lang from time to time, hear from the adults about his studies, his future job, his future family, and perhaps even see his wife and children someday, becoming a spectator to the smooth and happy life he would live.
Unfortunately, no one could predict what life would bring.
After that day, she never saw Yu Lang again.
It had not even been two days when she was shocked to hear that he had killed someone and fled. Numerous police cars came to the village and cordoned off the area around Yu Lang's home. Everyone ran over to watch, their hearts filled with panic and disbelief.
At first, all kinds of rumors circulated. Some said he had killed both his father and mother. Song Xiaoyue refused to believe it. She said that even if someone held a knife to her neck, she still would not believe it.
Later, when her parents brought up the matter again at the dinner table, the story had changed.
They said his father had gotten drunk and beaten his mother to death with a wine bottle. In a fit of rage, Yu Lang had then used the jagged edge of the broken bottle to stab his father to death.
They also said that before leaving, Yu Lang had arranged his mother's appearance, lifted her back onto the bed, and covered her properly with a blanket.
As though he had witnessed it himself, her father clapped his chopsticks down and spat as he spoke: “Whoever dared do that to my mother, I'd do the same in his place!”
Her mother slapped him and told him to stop talking nonsense.
And his grandmother simply laughed as she listened.
As for any further details, Song Xiaoyue had no way of knowing.
At the time, she only felt that people like them, standing outside the matter, were truly fortunate and carefree.
But Chen Qi knew.
Flipping through the materials that had already been read almost to tatters, through the cold black characters on white paper, she raised her head and asked the young man sitting across the table:
“I've read your statement and watched the interrogation footage. You said that after your mother was struck on the back of her head, she fell down and convulsed for a while before becoming still. You did try to save her, didn't you?”
Yu Lang hummed in response, his expression cold and distant.
“I performed CPR on her. Her heartbeat still didn't come back, and she was still losing body heat. I wanted to call 120, but my father thought she was dead and was terrified. He kept pulling me back and wouldn't let me make the call. He smashed my phone. At the time, I had no way to...”
His words stopped there.
His choice of words was somewhat technical, and Chen Qi could not help asking something unrelated to the case. “What major did you apply for at the medical university?”
Yu Lang glanced at her. “Clinical medicine.”
Chen Qi asked, “Why didn't you turn yourself in after committing the crime?”
Yu Lang said, “I was desperate at the time. All I could think about was killing myself.”
Chen Qi was silent for a few seconds before asking, “You've always disliked your father, haven't you?”
Yu Lang said, “It wasn't just dislike. I hated him.”
Chen Qi said, “But when you left in the middle of the night, you were wearing his clothes. Was that for the sake of anti-investigation measures?”
Yu Lang said, “I didn't have any clothes with a pocket on the chest.”
Chen Qi didn't understand.
Yu Lang explained, “I was afraid the photo of my mother would get wrinkled if I put it in my pants pocket.”
Chen Qi suddenly found herself unable to speak.
After a long while, she continued, “Why did you stop at Suixiu?”
Yu Lang said, “While the car was traveling along the road, I saw a range of high mountains in the distance.”
“Mountains?”
“Mm.”
“Why did you want to go up the mountain?”
“During the summer vacation after the gaokao, I went to Wucheng and worked as a temporary laborer at a construction site for two months. I earned money for my university living expenses, and I also planned to take my mother to a major hospital for a checkup, then go to Huangshan to watch the sunrise. The construction job was something I...” He paused. “It was my father who helped introduce me to it. I was paid by the day. I received my money for the first month. In the second month, because I went back to school, my father interfered, and the person in charge transferred the money to him. I came home early before National Day, wanting to get the money during the holiday so I'd have enough time to take my mother traveling and for her medical examination. He told me there was no money left. He'd gambled it all away. Because of that, I got into an argument with him. My mother spoke up for me, and that was how everything that happened that night came about.”
Yu Lang lowered his eyelashes. “Before killing myself, I wanted to fulfill the promise I hadn't kept to my mother.”
Chen Qi covered her mouth, saying nothing for a long time.
She drew a light breath and continued, “So you took the photograph with you, went to Suixiu Village, and decided that after watching the sunrise from the mountain, you would leave this world.”
“Mm.”
“And afterward? What made you change your plan?”
Yu Lang fell silent.
Until then, he had cooperated with her throughout, answering every question without sorrow or resentment. But at this moment, a fluctuation and hesitation appeared on his face that Chen Qi had never seen before.
Chen Qi said, “You have to tell me every detail, every truth. Only then can I help you as much as I possibly can.”
Yu Lang spoke slowly. “I met someone.”
Chen Qi vaguely guessed. “The girl who reported you?”
Yu Lang gave an almost inaudible response.
Chen Qi's thoughts immediately became tangled, and she did not know whether to feel relieved or regretful.
At least he had survived. That was more important than anything else. As long as he was alive, there was hope.
She said, “How did she find out about your situation?”
Yu Lang said, “I don't know.”
“She didn't suspect you at first?” Chen Qi crossed her hands on the table. “Because your circumstances were rather unusual.”
Yu Lang still answered, “I don't know.”
Then he added, “She just pulled me back.”
Chen Qi stared at him for a while. “Once you decided not to kill yourself, why didn't you turn yourself in either?”
Yu Lang did not answer.
Chen Qi inferred that he had fallen in love with the girl.
He longed to spend more time with her, accepted her betrayal, and bore no resentment.
At least, that was what Chen Qi saw.
In the first month after officially taking on the defense of this parricide case, Chen Qi unexpectedly received a call from the girl. She wanted to ask about the progress of the case, but Chen Qi politely declined to answer.
Later, when they met, she mentioned it to Yu Lang in passing. Yu Lang said there was no need to pay her any attention and not to reveal anything more.
So she respected her client's wishes and blocked the girl's number.
But she had not expected the other party to be so relentless. Over the course of half a year, she had already blocked several phone numbers from Jiangxi Province.
Chen Qi did not understand.
Having already taken the initiative to report the case, the girl had clearly possessed her own sense of right and wrong at the time. There was actually no meaning in doing these things now.
Carrying a heart full of enthusiasm, as well as sympathy for her client, Chen Qi had also thrown herself wholeheartedly into the matter, racking her brains from early morning until late at night. When she chatted about it with a university classmate who worked at the court, the other party even joked, “What a major case. You could use it as an analysis question.”
From the bottom of her heart, she wanted to help Yu Lang. She drew upon everything she had learned, collecting every piece of testimony and physical evidence that might be valuable or useful.
Unfortunately, her client himself was not particularly cooperative.
He seemed to have resigned himself to his fate, waiting for Heaven's judgment rather than the verdict of the law.
Their final meeting before the first-instance trial.
Chen Qi asked him what other requests he had.
He said no. Then he smiled and said, “Thank you, Lawyer Chen.”
Chen Qi defended him seriously, insisting that his actions constituted excessive self-defense.
The verdict came down quickly. It was objective, and cruel. The court determined that his actions constituted the crime of intentional homicide, but considering the special circumstances, sentenced Yu Lang to ten years in prison.
Chen Qi sat silently behind the defendant's seat, unable to suppress the indignation and desolation in her heart.
How many ten-year periods could a person have in a lifetime? Even with sentence reductions along the way, if nothing unexpected happened, then several years from now, this boy should have been walking gracefully in a white coat through some public top-tier Class III Grade A hospital, pursuing his ambitions, saving people from suffering, relieving them of illness and pain, rather than confining himself within prison walls.
But this was simply how the human world was. Where there was brightness and glamour, there were scabs. Where some people soared upward, others fell from high cliffs.
The victor was justice.
What happened afterward was as Chen Qi had expected. Yu Lang chose not to appeal.
After the case was closed, she never saw that boy again.
But she often thought of him.
Thinking it over and over, the thing she remembered most clearly was nothing more than his only smile and words of thanks before the first-instance trial.
—
After learning of Ji Shiqiu's verdict, Wu Yu rushed to Anhui Province through the night. It was early spring, warm and mild, yet she spent the entire afternoon sitting motionlessly on the steps outside the courthouse.
The city was bustling with traffic, but to her it was utterly unfamiliar. She had no identity, no one she knew, and nowhere to go.
Afterward, she found a car to take her to Suixiu.
The local driver did not quite understand. He bluntly asked what there was to do in that godforsaken place called Suixiu.
Thinking she was a lone traveler, he enthusiastically recommended other ancient villages bustling with people.
Wu Yu answered him absently, rolled down the window to smoke, and gazed out at the surging blue-white ears of wheat.
She returned to Sister Lin's inn at the head of the village. Only half a year had passed, and Suixiu had not changed much. The only changes were in the mountain scenery and the seasons.
Sister Lin's fish had all died. She had spread a shallow layer of sand across the bottom of the tank and filled it with gaudy Brazilian turtles.
Wu Yu teased the dazed-looking turtle through the glass.
The woman, having finished her work, came in from the back courtyard and was given such a fright by Wu Yu's sudden appearance that she nearly jumped.
She thought she was dreaming. She blinked many times, then tears welled in her eyes, and she hurried over to embrace her.
Wu Yu hugged Sister Lin back.
Sister Lin told her to sit down, took a sealed jar of osmanthus honey from the refrigerator, scooped out two spoonfuls, mixed it with hot water, and made it for Wu Yu to drink. She sat down and smiled. “The osmanthus in this was picked when you and...”
She stopped herself, avoiding that name. “When you were here, you picked it. Have a taste. See if the scent on you has been washed clean.”
Wu Yu smiled faintly and took a sip. It was sweet.
She got straight to the point. “I didn't report him.”
Though Sister Lin had never received much schooling, her mind worked quickly. “I know.”
Wu Yu asked, “How did you know?”
Sister Lin said, “After spending so many days together, don't you think I know the two of you?”
Sister Lin had likewise spent half a year worrying without ever knowing what had actually happened. “How is Xiao Qiu doing now, anyway?”
Wu Yu said, “Ten years.”
Sister Lin lowered her head and sighed, then anxiously picked at her fingers, murmuring, “How could it have turned out like this...”
Wu Yu wanted to ask the same thing.
She wanted to ask even more.
That night had been vivid yet muddled, as though she had been split into two people. One version of herself had been pushing and pulling, teaching her how to walk and speak, how to deal with the police, how to follow all of Ji Shiqiu's painstaking arrangements. The other version had been shouting and cursing.
Wu Yu's head throbbed unbearably.
She had almost forgotten the details.
Now, little by little, they surfaced as though threads were being drawn out and unraveled. Wu Yu asked, “Did he borrow your phone at the time?”
Sister Lin barely had to think. “He did. He borrowed a pen too. I searched for ages before finally finding a ballpoint pen. It was barely putting out any ink anymore. He fiddled with it for ages.”
Sister Lin pointed toward a corner of the wall and said that Ji Shiqiu had sat there at the time, moving a stool over. Whenever he had a moment, he would bend over it and write.
Wu Yu followed her gaze.
There was no one there now. On the ground, there was only a small patch of glaring sunlight.
Wu Yu suddenly felt her nose sting. “What did he tell you?”
Sister Lin said, “I asked him why he was studying so hard. He said he wasn't studying. He didn't know when you would leave, so he wanted to write you a letter before you did.”
“I even asked him if he was writing you a love letter. He just smiled and didn't answer.”
Wu Yu's eyes grew misty with tears.
After spending one night in Suixiu, Wu Yu returned to her hometown.
When she got back this time, her mother went into a furious rage, saying that she had gone out fooling around again and caused trouble, and asking why she hadn't simply died outside.
Mother and daughter got into a fierce argument and physical fight. Her stepfather stood to the side, fanning the flames. Wu Yu knocked over every shelf in the family's supermarket and poured cooking oil over them.
Her whole body trembling, she opened a lighter and threatened them, “Let me go, or I'll burn this place to the ground. I'll burn every one of you to death.”
At that moment, they were truly afraid.
She got her freedom, as she had wished.
Before that, Wu Yu had always been the notorious problem girl in town. She did not apply herself, was stubborn by nature, solitary and eccentric. Apart from the undeniably beautiful face she had been given, whenever people mentioned her, they could only shake their heads in distaste.
After finishing vocational school, she stayed at her family’s supermarket, working as a cashier.
She had been in many relationships, all of them short-lived, and she never took any of them seriously. She had decided that all men were no different from her biological father and stepfather, disgusting as locusts and leeches, gnawing away at the life that should have been whole, sucking away the sweet, hot blood she should have been allowed to possess.
She also had a rotten mother, someone willing to be a parasite clinging to the bone, who loved only her younger brother and regarded her as no more valuable than weeds or worn-out shoes.
After graduation, her mother accidentally learned that her stepfather harbored ill intentions toward her. Her hatred and jealousy toward her daughter grew day by day. On one hand, she constantly humiliated her, calling her a seductress and a prostitute. On the other, she urged her to hurry up and find some man who would have her and marry him, so she would stop getting in her way. There were already too many mouths in the household to feed and clothe, taking up space.
But whenever Wu Yu truly tried to leave, they would drag her back, confine her to the house, and beat her.
After moving to the urban area of Qianzhou, Wu Yu found a place to rent. Her roommate was a girl named Yu Liya who worked at a bank.
She had the same surname as him.
Wu Yu naturally took a liking to her.
When she learned that Wu Yu had studied finance at vocational school, she suggested that she take the vocational-to-bachelor's degree entrance examination, then try applying for jobs at banks.
Wu Yu was very grateful to her.
Before this, she had regained her freedom, but she had been muddled and directionless, trapped in that grief-stricken autumn night, unable to find peace.
But now, she no longer wallowed in it. She dared to feel her way across the river by stepping on stones.
She imagined that by the time Ji Shiqiu was released from prison, she should already have a stable job and income. Perhaps she might even have bought a house by then.
At that time, she would not have to take him from place to place, hiding wherever they could. She could even turn the house into a home together with him.
Yu Liya was cheerful and generous, often taking her out to have fun and introducing her to colleagues and friends.
There was no shortage of men asking for her contact information, but she shook her head and politely refused them all. There were also those who tried to sound Yu Liya out indirectly.
Yu Liya would laugh and say, “Stop imagining things. Wu Yu has a long-distance boyfriend.”
Strangely enough, despite living together every day, in the room next door, Yu Liya had never once seen Wu Yu speak to her boyfriend, have a video call with him, or seen that man come to Qianzhou to visit her.
The only thing that made the story convincing was that during the two years they lived together, the woman would leave the province once every three or four months, saying she was going to see her boyfriend. Every time, she would leave happily, then return dejected.
Yu Liya felt that the other person must be a piece of shit.
She was not someone without boundaries.
So she never asked too many questions. When it came to matters of love, she believed one should sweep the snow from one's own doorstep and not bother brushing the frost from another person's roof.
After finding out that Ji Shiqiu was serving his sentence at Luyang Prison, Wu Yu began writing him letters, one every month.
Every quarter, she would get up early and take a five-hour high-speed train, setting off for Anhui Province without ever growing tired of it.
The first time she went, while registering the visitation procedures, a staff member asked what her relationship to Yu Lang was. She said she was his girlfriend.
Later, a prison guard came out, puzzled. “Yu Lang says he doesn't have a girlfriend. No visitation.”
Wu Yu guessed.
But she did not give up. She still held onto a sliver of hope.
Life in prison was so monotonous and lonely. Perhaps it could also make a person quiet their mind and think.
Maybe he would regret it.
Maybe he could no longer endure the torment of loneliness either.
If she just kept coming, again and again, perhaps one of those times he would finally agree to see her.
She persisted like this for three years. Even the people at the prison grew annoyed and baffled whenever they saw her, and they tried to persuade her.
“Girl, just find yourself a good man and fall in love again. There are plenty of two-legged men on the street. You're so beautiful. Why make yourself suffer like this?”
Wu Yu said nothing.
She only knew that a leaf-shaped emptiness had been burned away inside her heart. Time would not heal it, and outsiders could not fill it.
She was like someone standing at the edge of an empty valley where every bird had vanished and every tree had withered, shouting for three years, with no echo ever returning.
Wu Yu's longing and hope for Ji Shiqiu began to change.
She came to hate him, resent him, and lose all peace in eating or sleeping. Yet she also missed him with a pain that tore straight through her heart. Especially when autumn nights arrived, whenever she awoke from a nightmare and suddenly sat upright, even breathing seemed to stab directly into her lungs.
Yet she had underestimated just how ruthless Ji Shiqiu could be.
The last time she went to see him, the staff drove her away in accordance with procedure.
Wu Yu's eyes overflowed as she struggled to rush inside, only to be restrained and held back where she stood. Facing the wall on the other side, she screamed hysterically:
“Ji Shiqiu, let me in. I want to see you. Let me see you. Who gave you the right to decide this yourself? Why? Why do you get to decide?”
They did not know who Ji Shiqiu was. There was no one in the prison by that name at all. They looked at her as though she were mentally ill and refused to let her enter again.
After that bone-deep outpouring, all things eventually returned to silence.
On the way back from Luyang Prison, Wu Yu felt as though her heart had been hollowed out. Her stomach was in excruciating pain, so bad that she could no longer walk normally.
Don't come to sit in on the hearing. Don't come to see me. Take good care of yourself.
Those three sentences Ji Shiqiu had said before they parted kept repeating in her mind.
So it turned out that none of those words had been lies, angry words, empty words meant to comfort her, or things he had blurted out without thinking in a moment of desperation. They had all been true. He meant to make good on every one of them, leaving her not even a shred of anticipation, not even a sliver of hope.
He calmly walked toward his own misfortune, and selfishly passed judgment on her fate too. That was to ask her to erase him completely from the rest of her life.
Wu Yu walked on in a daze for a long time, until her leather shoes had rubbed her heels raw.
She wrapped her trench coat tighter around herself and found a bench at the street corner to sit on. The dry, cold wind blew against her. It was late autumn, and the branches had almost completely withered. Many ginkgo leaves tumbled around her feet, blurring together in a daze, their golden brilliance like the rising sun.
Wu Yu lowered her head and looked at them. Through them, it was as though she could see once more the lush mountains, rivers, and autumn wilderness of Suixiu. She believed it now, and she no longer destroyed or loathed herself. She had truly been loved, and perhaps she was still loved. In the future, she could encounter or lose more love, just as leaves sprouted in spring, flourished in summer, and slept in winter.
Only,
her seasons would never have autumn again.
……
Another spring came. In a central city park, a sacredly arranged lawn wedding was being held. The bride and groom stood side by side at the edge of the stage, listening attentively as the emcee went over the proceedings, both of them beaming.
By late April, it was difficult to have weather this fine; the sky was astonishingly blue.
White doves flapped their wings, while mother-of-pearl-colored balloons gathered and floated in the air. Sunlight could be seen everywhere. Relatives and friends chatted and laughed merrily, while children chased one another and played.
The makeup artist came over to touch up the beautiful bride's makeup. She had just finished pressing powder onto one side of her face when the bride's friend squeezed her way over, holding out a delicately wrapped gift box with both hands.
She pretended to be displeased and rolled her eyes. “Didn't we agree you wouldn't get married until you were thirty-five? How could you break our agreement four years early?”
The bride lifted her eyelashes and glanced toward the groom, the corners of her lips curling gently. The reason was self-evident.
The other party seemed to have been paying attention to them the entire time. In the middle of making conversation with the guests, he turned his head and returned her gaze with a faint smile.
Seeing this, her friend shuddered and rubbed her arms in disgust.
The two women laughed and teased each other for a while. Suddenly, the friend remembered something. She pulled an envelope from her handbag and raised her hand to indicate behind her.
“I just came from over there. Some man stopped me and asked me to give this to you. Weird, isn't it?”
Then she guessed, “But he was pretty handsome. Is he some secret admirer of yours?”
The bride froze for a moment before reaching out to take it.
A blank envelope, bearing no name and almost no weight at all.
As if by telepathy, the bride's fingertips trembled for no reason. She opened the envelope and glanced inside, and her lower lip began to tremble.
She tipped what was inside into her palm.
It was a leaf from a Chinese tallow tree. It seemed to have been carefully preserved. There was not the slightest tear along its edges, its shape intact and perfectly symmetrical.
It was an exceptionally pure, blazing red, comparable to the flowers and flames in an oil painting.
“That's all?” her friend said with a disappointed click of her tongue. “I thought it was going to be something.”
The bride stared blankly at the leaf. After a moment, she suddenly realized something and lifted her head, her gaze sweeping in every direction.
Her friend noticed the strange expression on her face and wanted to ask what was going on.
But the bride seemed not to hear her. She pushed her aside, did not even bother with the stairs, and walked straight toward the stage, gathering the hem of her white veil in her hands as she climbed onto the platform that was about to bear witness to vows of love.
Across the vast lawn, countless figures moved to and fro, yet there was not a single person whose figure or appearance resembled him.
Not one.
He was engraved so deeply into the innermost part of her heart. If he had not truly walked out of her world, how could he be so impossible to find?
Her vision gradually blurred, as though she were standing in the rain, making even breathing feel so difficult.
The groom strode over and took hold of her shoulders, his voice tense with concern.
“What happened, Wu Yu? Why are you crying?”
“Nothing.” The bride shook her head and gently wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes. Choking back a sob, she said, “It's just… I suddenly feel… so complete, and so happy.”
The groom's eyes also filled with tears. Smiling, he pulled her into his arms.
“I feel so complete and so happy too. No, I feel even more complete, and even happier.”
“Why?”
“Of course because I love you.”
—
I love you.
I can do anything for you.
Anything within my power.
Including
saying goodbye forever.
[The End]