heartwarming bedtime love stories
Her name was originally Tian Ya. After her parents divorced, she changed her name to Tian Ya, meaning “horizon” or “the ends of the earth.” Tian Ya lived alone since she was 13 years old. Her father was often away on business, and the two-bedroom apartment became her own little world, symbolizing her “ends of the earth.”
Although Tian Ya believed she took good care of herself, her aunt was still worried. Eventually, her aunt decided to find a tenant for Tian Ya, someone who could at least keep her company. Two sisters from Wuxi, who were working in Shanghai, moved in as tenants.
So, in the apartment, Tian Ya—a little girl—began to share the space with two older girls. At 7:10 every morning, Tian Ya would head out to school. She usually grabbed a quick breakfast from a street vendor on the way. The route from home to school was lined with vendors, many of whom were unlicensed and sold breakfast on the street. If city inspectors suddenly appeared to crack down on them, a signal would go off, and the vendors would scatter in an instant.
Tian Ya was not a talkative girl, so even after the tenants had been living with her for over a month, she still didn’t know much about what they did for a living. It wasn’t until one morning, when she saw them among the fleeing vendors, pushing a small cart and running for their lives. The small cart was actually a mobile wonton stall, which Shanghai locals called “柴爿馄饨” (chaipan wonton). When she returned home that day, Tian Ya finally realized that the faint smell that always lingered in the living room was from the wontons.
Tian Ya started talking to them, sometimes helping them chop fillings or wrap wontons. Occasionally, she would even eat the various wontons they enthusiastically offered her. This continued for two whole years. Later, their business suffered due to competition from fellow townsfolk, and eventually, the sisters moved out.
For a while after they left, Tian Ya could still faintly hear the sound of chopping filling in the room. It took two months for this hallucination to fade, and by then, a new tenant had moved in. This time, it was an 18-year-old girl in her final year of high school. Tian Ya was 15 then, and she looked up to the high school girl, fascinated by the life she imagined for herself in the future.
As they lived together longer, the girl and Tian Ya grew closer. The girl often came to Tian Ya’s room to play, sometimes borrowing her telescope to look at the buildings across the street and the gray, low sky. As she watched, she would sometimes smile to herself.
Two months later, one evening, Tian Ya found an unsigned, postage-free love letter with numerous spelling mistakes in the mailbox downstairs. Tian Ya took the letter back to the girl and said, “This must be for you.” The girl didn’t mind the crab-like, scrawled handwriting and carefully deciphered the meaning of each word. As Tian Ya watched her intoxicated expression, she thought, “She must be in love.”
One afternoon, Tian Ya came home early and caught the 18-year-old girl skipping school. Sitting on the sofa was the handsome boy from the building across the street—the one Tian Ya had been secretly watching for years through her telescope. When she was around thirteen or fourteen, Tian Ya often spied on him, watching him pop his pimples. Now, here he was, in her room, softly greeting her: “Hi.”
After that, he appeared in front of Tian Ya almost every day, always shyly greeting her before taking the 18-year-old girl out for a ride. Tian Ya was left alone in her room, her heart feeling empty. The tenant girl didn’t get into college. After July, she moved back home. The boy also disappeared—from Tian Ya’s telescope, and from her heart, as if he had never existed.
When Tian Ya was 20 years old, the municipal government decided to demolish the buildings in her neighborhood. Upon hearing the news, Tian Ya returned from college. As she looked around the familiar room, she remembered all the people who had lived there: the wonton sisters, the high school girl preparing for exams, the rebellious girl with torn jeans… They had all come and gone, leaving nothing behind.
Tian Ya helped her aunt and uncle clean the apartment, even though it seemed pointless. Later, in a drawer, she found a torn piece of paper with some scattered sentences on it. She took it to the window to examine it closely. It was something she had scribbled years ago:
The moon and the lamp, separated by space,
Memory and oblivion, separated by time,
You and I, separated by this room.
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
