AnYi 安亦

Your character picks up a locket or a frame. Explain its contents and their significance.

‘Why did I agree to this?’

Susu blinked, dramatically batting her eyelashes, her smile so joyous one could almost ignore the fact that they were in a ‘Museum of Lost Love’. ‘Because I know you secretly love me, Minru, and you would do anything for your poor, heartbroken friend.’

‘You don’t look very heartbroken.’ was Minru’s cold, unfeeling remark. Susu made a clownish face and hugged her by the waist. ‘But I am! My heart is cracking into bits and pieces and I’m inwardly crying buckets and buckets!’ she dragged Minru to the row of exhibits like a koala bear uprooting its tree. ‘And this is precisely why I want to see what other people’s heartbreaks look like.’

‘And torture yourself with it, undoubtedly.’ Minru muttered under her breath, but she let Susu hang on her like an overgrown toddler without complaint, as they moved to look at the dazzling variety of the objects on exhibition. In strong contrast to the pink walls and paper curtains around them, the deserted belongings themselves all spoke volumes of sombre pasts. Notebooks, letters, cheap and worn jewellery, cracked phone cases, train tickets, receipts…all were labelled with a love story; the narratives varied in length and style, but they had one thing in common – the stories had all ended, once and for all. Minru wasn’t very comfortable with the sight. She found it hard to understand why anyone would want to rip out such a painful part of their history and put it on exhibition, nor did she fully comprehend Susu’s enthusiasm, even enjoyment, in taking in all these stories. She constantly wondered at her friend’s capability to heal – Susu was invincible, even in defeat.

She spent more time observing Susu than the tokens of ‘lost love’, having never been very good at blending her own emotions into others’. Susu had the habit of reading aloud and was in the process of absorbing the label of an old framed photograph. ‘… “and my cousin left me this before he died, and that was when I found out about the hidden part of his youth…” wow, this is so sad! This man’s daughter never knew where her dad went! His handwriting is beautiful, though, a bit like yours, actually… “with my wife Huiyin and daughter Hongyu, summer 1973’…that’s almost fifty years ago now…Minru? What’s wrong?’

Minru couldn’t speak. Her grandmother was looking at her through the glass; her faded smile looked young and contented, and Minru had never seen that on her aged face when she had been alive.