Seven Years of Us, One Year of Me Chapter 13

Seven Years of Us, One Year of Me Chapter 13

One fall, I passed a flower shop.

At the entrance, there was a large bucket of lisianthus.

Pale purple, white, and pink.

I stopped and looked for a while.

The owner asked, “Buying flowers?”

I thought about it.

“I’ll take a pot.”

I chose a pale purple one.

It looked like the first pot that bloomed on my balcony that first year.

Holding the flowers on my way home, I passed a milk tea shop.

The sign at the entrance read, New thirty-percent sugar drink recommended.

I went in and bought one.

Thirty percent sugar, no ice.

It tasted pretty good.

When I got home, I placed the flowers on the windowsill beside the others.

Six years had passed.

There were already seven pots of lisianthus on my balcony.

Every year after they bloomed, I pruned them, fertilized them, and waited for them to bloom again

the next year.

One of them had been with me for six years, and its stems had grown woody.

It still bloomed beautifully.

Look a photo.

I didn’t post it on social media.

I saved it on my phone in an album called Blooming.

The album was full of lisianthus.

From the first year to the sixth year.

The first year, there had only been one pot.

The flowers were tiny and pale purple.

The second year, I added the white one.

The third year, the pink one bloomed too.

By the fourth year, the balcony could barely fit them all.

In the fifth year, I moved to a new place with a bigger balcony.

There were more flowers.

In the sixth year, all seven pots of lisianthus bloomed.

Pale purple, white, pink, and one with edged petals.

I flipped through the photos.

Then I found the one from the first year.

Tiny pale purple flowers.

The caption had been: The seventh year is over. The first year has begun.

Back then, the balcony had been empty.

Only one pot of flowers, one cup, and one chair.

Now the balcony was full.

I sat in that chair, with seven blooming pots of lisianthus beside me.

My phone lit up.

I was a private message from my social media inbox.

Girl, I broke up this year too. I waited four years. I read your old posts and cried all night. I wanted to ask, how long did it take you to stop being sad?

I looked at that message for a very long time.

Then I typed back.

Don’t rush yourself to be done being sad. Sadness is normal. You waited for him for four years, so allow yourself to hurt for a while. But don’t stay where you are. Walk forward. It’s okay to walk slowly. Walk until one day, you notice the flowers on your windowsill have bloomed. Then you’ll

know.

I sent it.

Then I put down my phone.

The sea breeze drifted in, lifting one corner of the curtain.

On the windowsill, seven pots of lisianthus swayed gently in the wind.

I reached out and touched the closest flower.

Pale purple.

Tiny.

Just like the first one that bloomed in the first year.

Seven years had passed.

The flowers I planted myself had bloomed on their own.

Year after year.