Annual Heatstroke Incident

Cicadas chirping, waves of heat, and fruit on the verge of falling.

When I was eighteen, summer bloomed from your fingertips.

To this day, I still hate it.

—

Throughout her entire teenage years, Jiang Xiaochan secretly watched Lin Jia.

He once told her:

That dizzy, unexplainable infatuation she had for him—it wasn’t love. She was just suffering from heatstroke.

Jiang Xiaochan didn’t understand.

She spied on Lin Jia as he met with her sister on the rooftop.

Lin Jia smiled—careless and dazzling—a cigarette still pinched between his fingers, the same one her sister had smoked.

Sweat streamed down his face, stinging Jiang Xiaochan’s eyes until they swelled with pain.

Jiang Xiaochan hated it so much.

So this was what heatstroke felt like.