🕊️ Prologue

One Step Away (一步之遥)

... We met in the kind of silence that only happens right before it rains....

Not in the thunder or the downpour, but in that quiet moment — when the sky forgets how to hold itself together and everything feels like a question.

...He offered me an umbrella that day. I never gave it back....

And maybe that’s how it always was between us.

...He offered me pieces of himself without knowing. I held on to them quietly, afraid to ask for more....

We were always one step away. From a confession. From the beginning. From the kind of story that might’ve had a different ending.

This isn’t a love story the way you expect.

It’s the kind you remember when no one’s looking.

The kind that never had a beginning — and never really ended.

We were never a love story.

Just two people, walking beside each other... always one step away.

No promises. No endings. Just the soft, unbearable ache of what could’ve been.

And sometimes, I think that hurts more than heartbreak ever could.

Because we didn’t lose each other.

We simply never had the courage to begin.

---

... Author’s Note to the Reader...

Dear reader,

One Step Away was born from a single feeling — the ache of “almost.”

Of knowing someone saw you the same way you saw them, but neither of you said it. Of standing so close to something real and stepping back before it could begin.

...This isn’t a story of grand declarations or dramatic twists....

It’s about the quiet love. The kind we carry in glances, in what-ifs, in the pause between words.

It’s about growing up with someone in your heart, even when they aren’t beside you.

If you’ve ever held a feeling too tender to speak out loud…

If you’ve ever looked back and whispered, “We were almost something” — this story is for you.

We don’t always get closure in real life.

Sometimes, all we get is a smile across a room,

A name we don’t say aloud,

And a heart that remembers quietly.

If you’ve ever loved someone in silence,

If you’ve ever wondered, “What if I had said something?”

— then this story was always yours.

...Thank you for reading their silence....

Thank you for picking up One Step Away. This story is very close to my heart — it's woven from quiet emotions, unspoken feelings, and all the things we sometimes leave unsaid. But as much as it began with me, it isn't just mine anymore.

Every page you turn, every heartbeat you feel alongside the characters — it becomes yours too. Your hopes, your interpretations, your memories make this story complete. So I hope you find a little piece of yourself here.

Because One Step Away isn't just a story. It's a shared silence, a mutual glance, a love that almost was — and now, it's ours.

With all my heart, the author welcomes you all in the story.

I Didn’t Expect Rain Today

I didn’t expect it to rain today.

But that’s the thing with this city—it doesn’t ask for permission. One moment, the sky is cracked open with late summer sun, and the next, it’s crying like it remembered something it shouldn’t have forgotten.

I was standing just outside the literature building, fingers wrapped around the strap of my bag, pretending to scroll through my phone like I wasn’t watching the clouds fold in on themselves.

Everyone else had already left. The last lecture ended twenty minutes ago, and I had told myself I’d go grab bubble tea before catching the bus home. But then I saw him.

And my feet forgot how to move.

Li Yuhan.

There was nothing extraordinary about him. At least not in the way most people notice. He didn’t walk like he owned the world, didn’t speak like he needed to be heard. But he had this quiet… gravity. Like the kind of person whose silence made more noise than anyone else’s words.

He was standing by the bike racks, one hand in his coat pocket, the other holding an umbrella—not open yet. He looked up at the sky like he could argue with it. Or maybe like he understood it too well to try.

I watched him adjust the strap of his messenger bag and then shake his head, barely—like someone who just remembered something annoying, like forgetting your keys or getting caught in the rain. It was such a small gesture. But it felt like a paragraph.

I don’t know what made me walk toward him. Maybe it was the rain starting to fall. Maybe it was the way he didn’t rush to leave like everyone else. Or maybe it was the completely stupid hope that he’d see me the way I’d been seeing him for months now.

One step.

Then another.

And I was close enough to hear the rain on his umbrella when he finally opened it.

“Zhao Lian,” he said.

My name in his voice did something to me.

Not in a dramatic, thunderclap way.

More like… a window cracking open in a quiet room.

“You’re getting soaked,” he added.

I looked down at my damp sleeves and laughed, trying to hide the heat rising in my cheeks. “I didn’t bring an umbrella.”

He didn’t say anything for a second. Then he shifted slightly, just enough for the umbrella to cover the space between us.

And there it was.

That impossible kind of silence—the one that wraps around two people and dares them to break it.

I didn’t.

I stood beside him, half under the umbrella, pretending to read a text that didn’t exist. The air smelled like wet asphalt and paper. His umbrella had a little rip in the corner, and I watched a single raindrop hang there for three seconds before it finally fell.

“You waited for the rain to stop?” I asked, even though I knew he hadn’t.

“I don’t mind it,” he said.

I nodded. “Neither do I.”

Liar. I hated the rain. But standing next to him in it, I could’ve sworn I loved every drop.

He turned slightly to look at me, and for one second—one stupid, fragile second—I thought maybe he knew.

Not in a confident, rom-com way. But in a quiet, ache-behind-the-eyes kind of way.

Like he was carrying the same unspoken thing I was.

But he just nodded toward the path leading to the west gate. “You want to walk together?”

My heart said yes. Loudly. My mouth said, “Sure,” like it was no big deal.

We walked like people who didn’t know how to fill the space between them.

Our shoulders didn’t touch.

Our hands didn’t brush.

But the umbrella was just big enough for both of us. And somehow, that felt more intimate than anything I’d ever done with anyone.

He didn’t talk much.

Neither did I.

But that silence between us? It didn’t feel empty.

It felt like the kind of pause you take when you’re scared to ruin something perfect.

When we reached the bus stop, I expected him to keep walking. But he stopped.

“This is your stop, right?” he asked.

I nodded, fingers tightening around my bag. “Yeah.”

He hesitated for the briefest second.

It was the kind of pause that could have been a confession in another life.

But in this one?

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

And just like that, he was gone.

The rain had stopped by the time the bus came. But I still stood there with wet hair, a racing heart, and the kind of silence that makes your chest hurt.

He had shared his umbrella.

And that was nothing.

But also—everything.

That night, I wrote about him in the back of my sketchbook.

Not his name. Not even his face.

Just a sentence I didn’t want to forget:

 " He stood beside me like he belonged there, and I didn’t dare ask if he felt it too. "

The First Time I Noticed Him

People always ask, “When did you fall for him?”

And I think they want a moment.

Like a slow-motion scene, books spilling in a hallway, eyes meeting across a crowded room, violins playing in the background.

But the truth is, I don’t remember falling.

I just remember noticing.

It started on a Tuesday. Not that I knew then it would matter. Tuesdays were the boring middle-child of the week. The kind of day that slips past unnoticed unless something goes wrong—or something begins.

I was late to class. Not by much. Just late enough that the only seat left was near the back, by the window, next to someone I didn’t know.

I almost walked past it, planning to stand in the back and disappear like I usually did. But then the professor looked up, and I panicked. So I took the seat. I sat beside him.

Li Yuhan.

Back then, I didn’t know his name. I just noticed things.

Like how he always had a notebook open, but he barely ever wrote in it. How he tapped his pen against the edge, like he was waiting for thoughts that never quite landed. How he didn’t slouch like most people our age. His posture was quiet. Composed. Like he was always just a little aware of the world watching him, even if it wasn’t.

He didn’t look at me that day. Not once.

And still, I left class thinking about him.

The next week, I was early—by accident, really. I didn’t plan to sit next to him again. I just… did.

He was already there. Same seat. Same notebook. Same silence.

He had earphones in. Not blasting music, just low enough to hear but still be half-present. I remember sneaking a glance at his phone screen, trying to guess what kind of songs he listened to.

It was something soft. Something piano-based. Probably instrumental. It made sense.

He seemed like the kind of person who didn’t like lyrics telling him how to feel.

That day, he sneezed.

And I handed him a tissue.

He looked surprised—like no one had ever handed him a tissue before.

He didn’t say thank you. He just nodded.

And somehow, that tiny moment… it stayed.

Not because it was dramatic. But because it wasn’t.

After that, I started noticing more. Too much, maybe.

How he always left exactly two minutes before class ended, never in a rush.

How his handwriting looked like it belonged in a letter someone would keep folded for years.

How he sometimes smiled at the professor’s jokes when no one else did.

It was never a “lightning bolt” moment.

It was a hundred quiet realizations:

That his voice had the same softness as a late-night radio host.

That he held his coffee cup like it was something fragile.

That he made silence feel like a safe place.

One day, we bumped into each other at the library.

He was carrying a stack of books. All poetry.

I joked, “You don’t look like the poetry type.”

He shrugged. “They don’t need me to be. They’re already written.”

I still think about that.

I don’t know when it became something more than noticing.

Maybe when I started memorizing the sound of his laugh.

Maybe when I realized I looked for him in every crowd, without meaning to.

Maybe when I started wearing lipstick and then wiping it off before class, afraid it would say too much.

But I do know the moment I knew I loved him.

It wasn’t even about him.

It was me.

I caught myself smiling at a message my friend sent, and I wanted to show him.

Not for his reaction. Not for attention.

Just because he was the person I wanted to share things with first.

The ordinary things. The things that don’t matter—until they do.

That’s how I knew.

Not in the way stories are written.

Not in ink and drama and declarations.

But in the quiet.

In the space between heartbeats.

In the moment you look at someone and think:

“If you asked me to stay in this moment forever, I would.”

They say love starts with a spark.

Mine started with stillness.

With a boy I didn’t know

sitting two seats away,

doing nothing at all—

and somehow

still managing to undo me.

Some Things End Without Ever Beginning

It’s strange how the world keeps moving when your heart is stuck in one place.

The day after we walked home together, everything was exactly the same.

Same campus.

Same grey clouds.

Same faces walking past me like they had somewhere better to be.

But I wasn’t the same.

Because he had shared an umbrella with me.

And that shouldn’t have meant anything.

But it did.

He hadn’t texted.

Of course, he hadn’t.

We don’t text. We don’t call.

We exist in this weird space between strangers and something not quite friends.

Not enemies. Not lovers.

Not anything you can put a name on.

Just almosts.

Almost talking.

Almost touching.

Almost something.

I sat in the café across from the west gate, nursing a drink that had long since gone warm. I wasn’t waiting for him—not officially. But my eyes kept flicking toward the window, scanning the street like they had their own agenda.

A part of me hated this version of myself.

The girl who waited.

The girl who hoped for glances and umbrella-shares and silent goodbyes.

The girl who felt everything but said nothing.

“Zhao Lian, you okay?”

My friend Meiqi dropped into the seat across from me, pulling me back into the noise of the café. I blinked.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Just tired.”

She gave me a look. “You’ve been ‘just tired’ since October.”

I offered a smile, the kind that didn’t reach. “Midterms do that.”

She sipped her drink, squinting at me like she was debating whether to push further. But she didn’t. Instead, she leaned back, eyes flicking to the window.

“Isn’t that your Li Yuhan?” she asked.

I turned so fast I nearly knocked over my cup.

And there he was.

Crossing the street, hood up, earphones in, walking like the world was just noise he’d learned to live with.

I froze.

Meiqi raised her brows. “You two still doing that weird not-talking, not-dating thing?”

I didn’t answer.

Because how do you explain a love that never got its name?

Later that night, I found myself outside again.

It wasn’t raining, but the wind felt like a warning.

I walked without direction—past the library, past the old clock tower, to the garden behind the art building. It was where I went when I wanted to hear myself think.

And I thought about him.

About how he always left just before class ended.

About how he always carried that one grey umbrella, even when it wasn’t raining.

About how I’d memorized his handwriting, even though he’d never written me a single word.

And I thought:

What if he feels the same way?

What if he’s just as scared?

But then… what if he doesn’t?

What if I’m just someone who notices things too deeply and mistakes quietness for closeness?

The garden lights flickered once and stayed on.

The night was silent except for the occasional rustle of trees and the hum of a campus half-asleep.

I sat on the bench and closed my eyes.

And I whispered, just for myself:

“If he said he felt the same… I don’t know if I’d believe him.”

Because after so many months of silence, it’s hard to believe in anything except the ache you’ve grown used to carrying.

Later, walking back to my dorm, I saw something taped to the hallway bulletin board.

A flyer for the university’s winter festival.

Music. Lanterns. Fireworks.

One week away.

I stared at it longer than necessary.

Last year, I’d gone with a group of friends. We’d taken photos, laughed too loudly, screamed when the fireworks startled us.

But this year, I only wanted to see one face in the crowd.

One step away.

Always one step.

And suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I could keep living in this in-between.

This quiet love with no home.

Something inside me whispered:

“You either tell him soon… or learn to let him go.”

And both felt impossible.

They say the heart knows.

But mine was too busy waiting.

For a look.

For a word.

For a sign that the boy who shared his umbrella wanted to share something more.

And I kept wondering—

What if I never get it?

Would I still call this love?

Or just another beautiful silence?

...Next day...

Everyone Else Is Speaking.

The café was too warm.

The kind of warmth that fogged the windows and made your skin stick to your sweater, but no one said anything because it was cold outside and this was better.

I was sitting with three girls I wasn’t sure I could call close friends. But they weren’t strangers either. We’d taken enough classes together, shared enough group projects and late-night cramming sessions to drift into this vague category of “people you hang out with sometimes.”

Meiqi was there, of course. She was the only one I trusted with the silences I kept. The others were Qiao Lan — the hopeless romantic — and An Ying, who claimed she was completely over her ex even though she brought him up every 17 minutes.

They were already talking when I arrived. Loudly.

“I told him if he didn’t want something serious, then I’m out. Simple.”

That was An Ying, sipping aggressively on her strawberry smoothie like it was made of her ex’s tears.

“You say that now,” Qiao Lan chimed in, twirling a spoon in her coffee. “But next week, you’ll post some sad lyrics on your stories and reply to his Insta.”

An Ying shot her a look. “Excuse me for having feelings.”

“It’s not feelings, babe. It’s poor judgment.”

They laughed. I smiled. The kind of smile that doesn’t use your whole face.

Meiqi nudged my arm. “You okay?”

I nodded, sipping my drink. "Mm-hmm."

She raised an eyebrow, knowing I was lying, but didn’t push. She never did. That’s why I loved her a little more than the others.

We talked — well, they talked — about love like it was something that happened to everyone. Something you tripped into on a Wednesday afternoon or found in the sale section of a bookstore.

Qiao Lan was planning a surprise picnic for her boyfriend of six months.

An Ying was swearing off men for the rest of the semester.

Meiqi was “just talking” to someone from her literature class, which meant she was falling hard and pretending she wasn’t.

And I?

I was sitting there, stuck between their stories, wondering if I even belonged in the conversation.

“You’re awfully quiet, Lian,” Qiao Lan said suddenly. “You seeing someone and not telling us?”

I laughed. A soft, practiced sound.

“No. Nothing like that.”

“You like someone though. Don’t you?” she said, teasing, pointing a spoon at me like it was a truth detector.

I shrugged. “Does it matter?”

They all exchanged glances, and then Meiqi leaned in, voice gentle.

“Is it still… him?”

I didn’t answer.

I didn’t have to.

I looked down at my cup, tracing the rim with my finger.

What could I even say?

That I loved someone I’d never touched?

That my whole world shifted because of shared umbrellas and half-smiles?

That I spent nights wondering if his silence meant what mine did — or if I was just building dreams out of dust?

They were talking about breakups and kisses and awkward first dates.

And I was sitting here, holding onto a ghost of a maybe.

How do you compete with stories that have actual beginnings and endings?

Mine was all middle.

A never-ending pause.

A song stuck on the same verse.

A heart that didn’t know where to go, so it just stayed where it hurt.

At one point, An Ying turned to me again.

“Lian, you’ve always been so… careful. Don’t you ever want to just go for it? Just tell him?”

And I almost said yes.

Almost said I’ve thought about it every day.

Almost said I’ve written a hundred imaginary confessions in my head.

But I didn’t.

Because they didn’t understand.

“Some stories aren’t meant to be told out loud,” I said softly.

They fell quiet.

When we left the café, the sky was turning purple. The kind of dusk that makes everything look like a memory.

I walked behind the others, listening to them laugh and tease and plan winter festival outfits. And I let myself wonder what it would be like to be like them.

To be loud with your feelings.

To be brave.

To let love be messy and real and known.

But I wasn’t like them.

I was still trying to read the spaces between his silences.

Still wondering if his glances meant something.

Still hoping the next time we crossed paths, he might stop.

Might say something.

Might choose me.

But hope is cruel when it doesn’t have a deadline.

Everyone else is speaking.

Loving and breaking and beginning again.

And I’m here —

heart full, lips closed,

waiting for a love

that only exists

in the pauses.