© 2025 Kaela Svlverine. All Rights Reserved
There’s something about her.
The way she holds her coffee cup with both hands, like it’s a secret she’s not ready to tell. The way her eyes linger on raindrops sliding down the window, as if each one carries a memory only she remembers.
Zhang Jingyi.
I saw her first in a bookstore, tucked between a rack of poetry and old jazz records. She was wearing a cream sweater that looked three sizes too big and a red beret that had slipped slightly to the side. She didn’t look at me. She looked at the book in her hands like it might save her.
“Is that one good?” I asked, casually—too casually.
She glanced up. Her eyes were quiet. Not shy, not scared. Just… calm. Like someone who’s used to being on the outside of everything.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But the first sentence hurt a little. That’s usually a good sign.”
That was it. I was done for.
We didn’t become anything fast. Jingyi doesn’t rush. She moves like time means something—like she’s writing a diary entry with every step.
Sometimes we’d just sit on a park bench, watching the sky turn colors.
“I like quiet people,” she said once. “The kind who don’t need to fill silence with sound.”
I nodded. “I like loud people,” I teased.
She smiled, but didn’t laugh. “Then maybe we cancel each other out.”
I wanted to tell her— No, we balance each other.
But Jingyi’s the kind of girl you don’t interrupt. You wait for her to unfold like a letter you’re scared to finish reading.
She took me to her favorite vintage cinema once. They played a French black-and-white film with no subtitles. We didn’t understand a word—but I swear I understood everything she was feeling.
“I like sad movies,” she whispered after, “because at least they feel honest.”
“Are you sad?” I asked.
She hesitated. “No… I just feel everything a little too much. And the world feels… not enough, sometimes.”