Wish

Chen An tapped her pencil against her desk, the tempo increasing faster and faster until it slipped and clattered onto the floor. The blank staff paper in front of Chen An seemed to taunt her. She had never written music before, much less a solo piece for the winter concert. Despite the hundreds of hours she had spent listening and playing music, her mind went blank when she tried to think of a single melody.

Her violin lay uselessly on her bed, and it took all the strength in Chen An's body to not give up and lay beside it. Picking up her poor pencil, she swirled it between her fingers mindlessly before finally scribbling down the treble clef symbol at the front of the lines.

Sighing, she pulled out her phone and played Vivaldi's "Autumn" through its speakers at full volume in an attempt to force some inspiration into her brain; no one else was at home besides her anyways. Resting her head on the back of her desk chair, she wondered if she had even a fraction of the talent Vivaldi had to write The Four Seasons. But, even a miracle couldn't help her wish for that much.

Suddenly, Chen An's phone buzzed, interrupting the stream of violin music pouring out from it. Lifting her head annoyed, Chen An picked up her phone, nearly throwing it away. A text message from Li Jun Jie popped onto the screen. "Are you in your apartment right now?"

Chen An thought about ignoring him but typed back anyway, "Yes."

She leaned back in her chair to peer through her window at Li Jun Jie's; the lights in his bedroom were shut off.

After a moment, another bubble appeared in the message chat. "Can you come down for a minute?"

"Why?" Chen An wrote back flatly.

"Why must you always be so skeptical? Just come down. It'll only be a minute."

Looking at the hopelessly blank paper on her desk, Chen An sighed in resignation and made her way down, her pink slippers clacking against the stairs.

As she exited the apartment, the cold night air penetrated her thin pajamas, and she felt goosebumps rising on her skin. Autumn was always brief in the city, quickly giving way to the impatient winter that followed.

Her eyes found Li Jun Jie by the bench between the two apartment buildings, a single street lamp casting yellow light onto his figure.

Chen An approached him, and he turned around at the sound of her footsteps, revealing a white pastry box in his hands. Through the small plastic window, Chen An could see a cake decorated with heaps of pink frosting.

"Happy birthday, An An." Li Jun Jie smiled at her, holding out the box in his hands.

The two sat on the bench, and Chen An removed the cake, setting it on top of the box unceremoniously. The pink frosting had begun to melt off of the sides, pooling in a thick pile at the cardboard beneath the cake. A squiggly written "happy birthday" in red icing decorated the top, the rainbow sprinkles seeming to get swallowed by the frosting.

"Did you decorate it yourself, Li Jun Jie?" Chen An asked him, almost afraid of being poisoned.

He held a hand to neck sheepishly. "I didn't realize you had to refrigerate cakes, so I had to salvage it the best I could, sorry."

Examining the cake from every angle, Chen An let a small smile stretch across her face. "It's beautiful, thank you."

Li Jun Jie pulled two forks out of his pocket in a dramatic twist, handing one to Chen An.

"Are you sure that's clean?" Chen An raised an eyebrow at him.

Li Jun Jie faked a playful glare. "Oh, come on. You don't give me enough credit."

Chen An laughed, sinking her fork into the slowly collapsing cake.

"How did you know it was my birthday anyway?" Chen An asked him. She had never told anyone about her birthday, not even her best friend Lu Xi Xi. Chen An had nearly forgotten it herself. It was never something she celebrated, given that her mother's death date was so close.

Li Jun Jie licked his fork. "I saw your student ID in your wallet when you gave it to me for ice cream the other day. I intended to tease you about your horrendously awkward ID photo but saw that your birthday was coming up."

Chen An glared at him but could not be angry for long, the sugar rush from the cake filling her heart with bliss.

As they astonishingly finished the whole cake, or mainly Chen An finished the cake, she turned to gaze at the cloudy sky. Li Jun Jie watched her stare at the wide expanse above them.

Chen An let out a sneeze, feeling the cold of the night seep deeper into her body.

Startled, Li Jun Jie peeled off his jacket and swung it around Chen An's shoulders, pulling her ever slightly closer to him by its collar. "Why did you come out in just your pajamas, An An? Do you want to catch a cold?" he scolded her, but concern was evident in his voice.

Chen An wrapped the warm jacket around herself tighter. It smelled of evergreen and grape candies, the scent familiar, though it had never been quite so strong. "You were the one that chased me out here in a hurry. I didn't know we would be outside for so long."

"Don't be foolish, An An. You have to take care of yourself first." Li Jun Jie continued to lecture her.

Chen An paid him no mind, gazing at the gray sky to search for distant stars. Her mother had written in her journal once that wishing on a star on one's birthday would ensure that the wish would come true before the next one. Chen An had always been skeptical of these wish promises, but she still did it every year from her bedroom window. "It's hard to find stars in the city," she pondered aloud.

The bright lights of the bustling city still lively long after dark obscured the faint glow of the constellations. Chen An wondered if there was a place on Earth where one could be close to the stars, close enough to reach out and grab one from the sky. Maybe the only place like that was heaven, and her mother had gone in search of one, too.

"Hmm…" Li Jun Jie began his search too, his eyes scanning the empty void above them. "How about this?"

Li Jun Jie raised a pointed finger, drawing a star shape right above Chen An's eyes. "We can just make one of our own."

Chen An laughed at his child-like thoughts but didn't deny him.

Li Jun Jie stretched his arm higher and higher into the sky, squinting at the tip of his finger. "If you look close enough beyond that line, you'll surely find a star, though maybe a few galaxies away."

Accepting his wild explanation, Chen An interlocked her fingers and closed her eyes, making her birthday wish.

Chen An had a lot to wish for this year: to do well on the college entrance exam and get admitted to Zhejiang University, to get the violin solo in the winter concert. But, she seemed to forget all of those things in that moment, and the only thing she could wish for was for Li Jun Jie to get better.