The scars on my face make me afraid to hope for love

You cannot guess what love looks like, and you will be wrong if you guess it. I almost lost the chance of happiness because of my sensitivity. It was the first time I raised my head to look at the sky in Lhasa. It was so blue that it made me want to cry.

He easily saw my desire

When I was 21 years old, I graduated from college. Just after I was assigned to the unit, I experienced a fire. After that, I had a conspicuous and ugly scar on my right cheek. My life was turned upside down overnight, and the boys who had pursued me had disappeared, either explicitly or covertly. There are fewer and fewer friends around me. My mobile phone is on all day long, but only occasionally rings.

That year, my mother told me in despair that when spring comes, love will not be far away. It will rest on the palm of my hand like a butterfly, so every good girl will have someone to love her.

I believe what my mother said, but I am already 26 years old. When I come home from get off work every day, I often lock myself in a small room. I don't like the sun and don't want to have contact with the opposite sex. Every New Year's Day, I always take a set of photos, taking only the left side, so that the bright and delicate face in the photo can comfort my riddled heart. Occasionally when I go out, I always put on heavy makeup, lower my head, and cover my ugliness with longer and longer hair. It was like this for 5 long years. (A woman’s private talk from sifanghua)

On New Year’s Day in 2006, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I walked into the photography shop called “Past and Present Life” on the corner of the street. When I finished putting on makeup, I had already seen him. That was the first time I saw Chen Sheng. He stood waiting for me in the darkness of the studio, as thin and long as a shadow.

I walked into the shooting room and politely told him that I only took pictures of the left side, not the front. He said with a cold face: "When you come to this room, you must obey my arrangements." I stared at him a little surprised, because every year before that, when I went to take photos, the photographers would always I politely said yes. He looked at me and repeated it again, he said, either listen to me or leave. After staring at each other for nearly a minute, I walked out of his studio. He chased me out, stood at the door and asked me: "Do you want to walk out like this with a face full of makeup?"

Still took the photo. . He was very dedicated, taking high and low angles, and he also put a lot of thought into a set of side photos. When I walked out the door, I politely said thank you, and he said, you are so beautiful. There were winding corridors in the photography shop, as dim as moss. I walked past him with my head held high and my face expressionless, without saying a word.

A week later, he called me and asked me to pick up the photos. This domineering and confident man didn't even let me choose the samples myself. However, when I saw the photo and the sentence on the album cover, I had to forgive him. The cover shows my distracted expression for a moment when I was taking pictures, lonely and desolate. At the bottom of the photo, he wrote a footnote in a dark font imitating Song Dynasty No. 5. He wrote: I have always stood on your left side, which is the position of love.

This sentence touched me deeply. The left side is the love position I long for, because my imperfections cannot be seen there. He asked me why I only took photos like this. He was a man with strong curiosity, and I could see the sense of inquiry in his eyes. I took the photo and ended up not giving him an explanation.