Mint-Stained Shirt

When he was young, Xiao Yu’an wore a white shirt and rescued a child from a tree. The child’s hands were sticky with sugar water from the melted peppermint popsicle he’d been eating, and he left a five-fingered imprint on the front of Xiao Yu’an’s shirt. “This is a stamp,” the child declared. “It means you’re my gege now.” When he was young, Ming Shu had to climb up and up and up in a tall tree in order to see the gege in the neighbors’ yard. He wanted to quickly grow big and tall, so he wouldn’t need to climb any more trees. So he would be able to turn around, at any time, and see the gege from the Xiao family. “You don’t need to wait for me,” he said. “Let me chase you. Let me make you my guiding light.”