It was when Lin Yitang turned twenty-nine that she first realized how good she was at compromising.

That night at 11:40, she sat at the dining table with two plates of already-cold spaghetti in front of her.

The candles had long since burned out.

Her phone screen lit up.

Cheng Yuqian sent a message: "Have to entertain clients last minute, not coming home. You go to sleep first."

She stared at it for a long time.

Today was their seventh anniversary.

In the afternoon, he had texted asking whether she wanted red or white wine for dinner. After work, she had made a special trip to the supermarket to buy the steak he liked, came home to shower and change, even sprayed on the perfume she usually hated to use.

In the end, she only replied with one word.

"Okay."

Yitang flipped her phone face-down on the table.

She wasn't angry.

At least, that's what she told herself.

Adults dating aren't like people in their twenties who can argue until 3 a.m. over a missing goodnight. Yuqian was thirty-four, competing for a department head position; he was busy, and she should understand.

She wrapped his plate of pasta in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

She dumped hers.

This was the umpteenth time she had told herself "forget it," and she could no longer remember how many.

It hadn't always been like this.

Back when they first started dating, Cheng Yuqian would ride his motorcycle across half of Taipei just to deliver a cup of hot soy milk to her office downstairs.

She asked, "Are you sick? You can get soy milk at any convenience store."

He smiled and hung his helmet on the rearview mirror.

"But convenience store soy milk doesn't miss you."

Back then she laughed so hard she squatted on the roadside.

Later they moved in together.

First it was toothbrushes, then clothes, books, coffee mugs, and eventually even their lives seemed to naturally stack together.

Love is strange, though.

It doesn't break all at once one day.

It's more like a crack in the corner of a wall.

At first just a thin line; you think it's nothing, just hang a picture to cover it.

Then the crack grows longer.

So you move a cabinet in front of it.

Until one day the whole wall starts to lean, and you're still standing underneath wondering if you should find something else to prop it up.

Yitang was the one who kept looking for things to prop it up.

Yuqian didn't like her eating alone with male colleagues, so she stopped going.

He thought her job didn't pay well and she was always working overtime, so she switched to a job closer to home.

He said he didn't like her with short hair, so she grew it long.

The first time his mother met her, she asked if she could cook.

She smiled and said, "A little."

She actually couldn't at all.

Later she learned.

Sweet and sour pork ribs, steamed fish, sesame oil chicken—even the lion's head meatballs his father liked.

A friend once asked her, "Why do you have to go this far?"

She answered seriously, "When two people are together, they have to compromise with each other."

The friend was silent for a few seconds.

"But why do I only see you compromising?"

She was a bit unhappy at the time.

Even felt her friend didn't understand.

When you love someone, how can you calculate who gives more in everything?

Looking back now, she finally understood what was truly terrifying about that sentence.

Because she had never kept score.

So Yuqian gradually forgot that some things were things she had given up to him.

Not things he was entitled to from the start.

Two weeks after their seventh anniversary, they talked about marriage for the first time.

That day Yuqian's mother came over for dinner.

At the table, the elder suddenly said, "Yitang isn't young anymore either. If you really want to get married, hurry up and do it next year. It's harder for a girl to have kids after thirty."

Yitang's hand holding the chopsticks paused.

Yuqian lowered his head to drink soup.

"We'll see."

Three words.

She remembered them all night.

After his mother left, she was washing dishes in the kitchen.

Yuqian came in to get water.

She didn't turn around, only asked, "You don't want to marry me?"

The faucet kept running.

He stood behind her, silent for a long time.

"It's not that I don't want to."

"Then what is it?"

"There's a lot of pressure right now. House, wedding, kids—which one doesn't cost money?"

She turned off the water.

"We can skip the wedding."

Yuqian frowned.

"See, there you go again."

She froze.

"What?"

"Every time we talk about something, you rush to solve it. Marriage isn't fixed just by skipping the wedding."

Yitang looked at him.

She suddenly felt it was a bit absurd.

So even her willingness to compromise could become a mistake.

But in the end she still said, "Okay, then wait until you're ready."

This wait lasted another year.

On her thirtieth birthday, she didn't make a wish.

The cake was one Yuqian bought on his way home from work—a convenience store chocolate cake with slightly dry strawberries on top.

He had forgotten she didn't eat chocolate.

But she still took a bite.

"Is it good?"

"Mm."

She smiled.

She had become very good at putting others at ease.

What truly ended everything wasn't anything major.

No third party.

No betrayal.

Not even a dramatic fight.

Just one Saturday afternoon.

While tidying the closet, Yitang pulled out a cardboard box from the bottom.

Inside were her old things.

A film camera from college, several travel magazines, a half-written Spanish notebook, and a postcard sent back from Iceland ten years ago.

On the back of the postcard were words twenty-year-old her had written to herself.

"Before turning thirty, go see the aurora once."

She sat on the floor and looked at it for a long time.

She had already turned thirty four months ago.

She suddenly couldn't remember when she had stopped traveling.

It seemed like Yuqian said taking leave was too much trouble.

Or maybe he didn't like long flights.

Later, they said they needed to save for a down payment.

So she never went to Iceland.

Never finished learning Spanish.

The camera hadn't been taken out in a long time either.

Nothing disastrous had happened in her life.

Just many tiny, tiny things, one by one, had disappeared.

And it wasn't until that afternoon that she realized all those vanished things were pieces of herself.

When Yuqian came home that evening, she was cooking curry.

"Smells good."

He hugged her from behind.

Even that hug still felt familiar.

Yitang gripped the spatula, and suddenly her nose stung.

She asked, "Yuqian, do you still remember I used to want to go to Iceland?"

"Iceland?"

He thought for a moment.

"Did you?"

She smiled.

"Yes."

"Then go someday."

Again, someday.

There were so many "somedays" in their life.

Someday get married.

Someday travel.

Someday move.

Someday when we're free.

Someday later.

She turned off the stove.

"What if I want to go now?"

Yuqian sat at the dining table scrolling on his phone.

"Not recently, I'm busy at the end of the year."

"I'll go by myself."

His hand stopped.

"You're going to Iceland alone?"

"Mm."

"Is that necessary?"

In that moment, Yitang suddenly went quiet.

She looked at the man she had loved for eight years.

He hadn't done anything wrong.

You could even say he had always been a decent person.

Hardworking, didn't gamble, didn't get blackout drunk, didn't fool around outside.

But the cruelest thing about love is probably that a person doesn't have to be unforgivably bad to be left.

Sometimes, they're simply no longer right for you.

And you've simply finally stopped wanting to keep wronging yourself.

"It is."

She said.

"For me, it is."

Yuqian frowned.

"Yitang, what's been going on with you lately?"

She leaned against the sink.

Thought for a while.

"I don't know either."

She lowered her head and smiled.

"Maybe I just suddenly realized I haven't asked myself what I want in a long time."

"Aren't we doing fine?"

"Yeah."

She lifted her eyes.

"That's exactly why it's too fine."

No violence, no betrayal, no one did anything unforgivable.

So she didn't even feel entitled to pain.

"Yuqian, let's break up."

His expression froze.

"What did you say?"

"I said, I want to break up."

He stood up.

"Because of Iceland?"

Yitang shook her head.

"No."

"Then why?"

She looked at him, and the tears finally fell.

Not because she couldn't bear to let go.

But because she finally understood that pulling eight years of herself out of a relationship really did hurt.

"Because I always thought that if I just stepped back a little more, you'd take one step toward me."

She took a breath.

"But I stepped back for eight years."

"You never came."

Yuqian was silent.

After a long time, he said, "I can change."

It was the sentence she had waited countless times over eight years to hear.

Strangely, when she finally heard it, she didn't feel as happy as she had imagined.

"I know."

She wiped away her tears.

"But I don't want to have to leave just to get you to change."

A month later, Yitang moved out of the apartment they had lived in for five years.

No torn photos, no thrown rings.

She simply packed her things one by one into cardboard boxes.

The last thing she took was that film camera.

The following February, she went to Iceland.

When the plane landed in Reykjavik, outside the window was a vast gray-white snowfield.

She suddenly cried.

The old lady next to her handed her a tissue.

Asked in English, "First time here?"

Yitang smiled and nodded.

"Yes."

"Alone?"

She paused for a moment.

"Yes."

The old lady smiled.

"Good."

That night, she joined the aurora bus tour.

Around 1 a.m., the bus stopped in the wilderness.

Everyone stood in the snow waiting.

It was cold.

Cold enough that her fingers went numb.

People started to get disappointed; the guide said the clouds were too thick tonight, they might not see it.

But Yitang wasn't in a hurry.

She looked up at the black sky.

Suddenly felt that whether she saw it or not didn't seem so important.

At least this time, she had come.

Not waiting for someone to be free.

Not waiting for someone's approval.

Not waiting for a someday that might never come.

At 1:47 a.m., a faint green light appeared in the sky.

Someone shouted.

Then the green light slowly unfolded.

Like someone pulling open a huge silk cloth in the pitch-black night sky.

Yitang stood in the snow, head tilted back.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and quickly turned cold.

She picked up the camera.

The shutter clicked.

In that moment, she suddenly remembered what Yuqian looked like eight years ago, riding his motorcycle to bring her soy milk.

She had loved him.

Deeply.

So she had no regrets.

She just finally understood that loving someone can mean compromising.

What to eat today, you can compromise.

Where to travel, you can compromise.

Whether the curtains should be gray or beige, you can compromise.

But some things you can't.

Your dreams.

Your dignity.

Your boundaries.

And that original version of yourself.

Because someone who truly loves you won't need you to cut yourself in half just to fit into their life.

She looked down at the photo she had just taken.

The photo was a little blurry.

The aurora wasn't as beautiful as the ones online.

But she liked it very much.

She held the camera to her chest, standing in the night at minus ten-something degrees, and suddenly smiled.

Thirty-one years old.

A year late.

But it didn't matter.

This time, she wasn't waiting for anyone to be ready.

She was ready.

#OneSongOneStory#ShortStory#LoveStory

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