Whenever I slowed down on purpose to wait for her, she would mess up my hair and laugh at how annoyed I got.
She once said that even when we were old and gray, the two of us would still walk this path together, supporting each other and basking in the sun.
But now… I was already two years older than she ever got to be.
I rode all the way back to the old apartment complex where my sister used to live. Ever since the accident, the place had been empty.
When I opened the rusty security door, a musty smell rushed out.
In the living room hung a photo of the four of us, covered in dust.
My sister and I grew up depending on each other.
When I was sixteen, Vivienne entered our lives.
She said my sister had saved her from drowning and given her a second life. From then on, she was my sister’s best friend.
She and I… were like natural enemies. We argued over the smallest things, faces red, tempers flaring.
Until after our senior-year graduation trip, when a mudslide struck the resort area.
Classmates were picked up by their parents one after another, but my sister was away on a business trip and couldn’t return in time.
The rushing mud buried the hotel in an instant. I was pinned under a collapsed beam, silently waiting for death.
But Vivienne fought her way back against the flow, digging with her bare hands from dawn until nightfall.
“Dorian, don’t be scared, I’m here!”
She carried me on her back and walked the whole night.
Only when she finally got me to the hospital did I notice that she had lost both of her shoes.
Her feet were covered in pale, water-soaked wounds, overlapping each other.
Her always-pretty manicured nails were broken from the roots, bloody and torn.
“Dummy, why are you crying? As long as you’re safe, it’s worth it even if I end up crippled!”
In that moment, even the spring breeze couldn’t compare to the smile in her eyes.
On New Year’s Eve, the three of us were making dumplings when Lucian showed up, looking a complete mess.
He was the son of a neighbor from our hometown. His family had gone bankrupt and he was hiding everywhere because of debt collectors.
Because my sister remembered how his family once gave her a bowl of hot porridge when she was young, she didn’t hesitate to take responsibility for him.
She quit her stable, respectable job and started doing business.