He Was Just Waiting for the Light to Change

There was a boy I used to like.

His mother was a teacher in a small rural village.

When the earthquake hit, the building she was in collapsed. He ran there looking for her. While he was searching through the ruins, an aftershock came. A slab of concrete fell on him.

He survived. But one of his legs didn’t. It had to be amputated.

Not long after that, his father remarried and started a new family. He had another child. No one wanted to take care of the son who had become inconvenient—the son with one leg, the son who reminded everyone of tragedy.

So he lived alone. In winter, he didn’t even have a heater.

The only person who really cared was an aunt who would quietly help him whenever she could—bringing food, checking in, helping him get through.

After middle school, he went out looking for work. No one wanted him.

Eventually he started learning auto repair from his uncle. That’s where I met him.

I took my car to the shop one day, and there he was. He was tall—almost six-foot-three. He looked lean at first glance, but his body was solid muscle from years of labor. When he smiled, he had one small dimple. And when I smiled at him, he got shy.

I remember that. His clothes were always covered in grease and dust. But his hair was always clean. Freshly washed. That detail broke my heart for reasons I still can’t fully explain.

One afternoon he was lying underneath my car loosening parts. I was wearing a dress with a slit and didn’t think much about it. I crouched down to point to where I’d been hearing a strange noise. The second I crouched, he slid himself out from under the car so fast it startled me. A second later, I realized why. I probably exposed more than I meant to. He was too embarrassed to even stay there.

Later we added each other on WeChat. We talked for hours. Then days. Then months. Eventually, I told him I liked him. He turned me down. He said a man like him couldn’t give a woman a future. He said he couldn’t support a wife. Couldn’t support children.

I laughed and told him I was actually pretty good at making money. I said supporting him wouldn’t be a problem. Supporting children wouldn’t be a problem either. He still said no.

Maybe he didn’t like me that way. Or maybe he cared enough not to let me choose hardship with him.

I never really knew.

Then one day I heard what happened. He had just gotten off a night shift and was walking home. A drunk driver hit him. He was rushed to the hospital. Still alive. Still salvageable.

But his father signed the refusal for further emergency treatment.

And that was it. He died.

Then suddenly the relatives came. The same people who didn’t want him. The same people who avoided him while he was alive. They showed up all at once, arguing over his death compensation. Fighting each other for what little money his life was worth after it ended.

I know there are people in this world with harder lives than his.

I know suffering isn’t rare.

But I still can’t understand why his story had to end like that. No one really raised him. No one taught him how to survive.

And still, he didn’t become bitter. He didn’t become cruel. He didn’t go bad. He could have lived on assistance. He could have asked for donations. He could have leaned on sympathy.

He didn’t. He insisted on earning everything himself.

He knew I had money. If he had wanted to, he could have lied to me. Manipulated me. Taken advantage of me. He could have easily gotten money out of me and made life easier for himself.

But he never did. Not once.

And in the end, he wasn’t doing anything reckless. He wasn’t fighting. He wasn’t running. He wasn’t asking the world for anything.

He was just standing there at a red light, waiting for it to change.

And someone drunk drove into him.