The light of morning spilled gently across the lobby floor of Morning Light News, cutting long streaks through the glass walls like brushstrokes on a quiet canvas.
Inside, the newsroom was already alive.
Cameras clicked into place. The director waved her hand briskly, signaling a final check. Lights were being tested, boom mics raised. Everyone was in motion — purposeful, brisk, efficient — as if they too had awakened with the dawn and were now determined to chase it.
Among the small team gathered at today's location shoot, one girl stood a little away from the rest.
Sun Ruolin stood quietly, her figure light and still. A soft knitted cardigan draped over her slender shoulders, the color a gentle cream tinged with blush. Her skirt, long and pleated, fluttered slightly in the summer morning breeze. From a distance, she looked like she belonged not in a newsroom, but in a pastel watercolor.
She wasn't the host. She wasn't the main reporter. She never was.
Her role, subtle and unspoken, was to observe — to record moments that would later become sentences, sentences that would then be woven into stories for people to read. Her fingers moved swiftly yet lightly across the pages of her leather-bound notebook, her pen gliding like a dancer trained in silence.
"Location: East District Community Hall.
Time: 7:52 AM.
Light breeze. Sunrise soft, but warm.
Children in uniforms running past the courtyard.
Interviewee: Ms. Tang Yulin, Head Nurse from City Hospital — speaking on summer volunteer health programs.
Expression: Tired but gentle. Eyelids swollen. Perhaps worked overnight."
She paused for a second, then quickly scribbled beneath in smaller letters:
"Note to self: emphasize the 'human warmth' angle in narration. Early mornings. Ordinary heroes. Not statistics, but hands that hold needles and wrists that check pulses."
As she wrote, a voice came from just behind her, casual and laced with the comfort of familiarity.
"Still writing everything down like it's poetry?"
Ruolin turned slightly. It was Lin Meng, her senior by two years, currently balancing a camera bag and a takeaway cup of soy milk in one hand, a warm mantou in the other.
She smiled. "Old habit dies hard."
Meng laughed. "Well, your habits make my job easier. The last time you wrote captions for my footage, the editor called it 'soulful cinematography.' I didn't even adjust the brightness."
Ruolin lowered her gaze, quietly amused. "It was a good shot. The boy with the scraped knee holding the nurse's hand?"
"That wasn't even planned." Meng took a sip of his drink, then he nudged his cup to the scenery before them. "The light hit just right. Like a movie."
She turned her head to look at the courtyard again and saw children crowding around a booth giving out free bandages and stickers.
"The light always hits just right," she murmured. "You just have to wait long enough for it."
Meng blinked. Then shook his head with a laugh. "See? That's exactly the kind of thing I mean. Ruolin, you're wasted on health reporting."
She only smiled. Not denying it. Not agreeing either.
Instead, she flipped to a fresh page, watching the sunlight begin to climb up the bricks of the community hall. Her pen touched the paper once more as she tilted her head up, taking in the scene before her.
The camera crew was capturing Ms. Tang smiling at the host's gentle joke. Behind them, sunlight slanted down over the tiled rooftops and sleepy morning trees, their leaves not yet fully awake. There's a dog barked lazily from a stall across the street. Somewhere nearby, someone was steaming buns. The air smelled faintly of flour and dew.
Ruolin exhaled and smiled.
This was her favorite part — this moment before the rush, before the typing, before the meetings. Just her and her notebook, tucked quietly behind the lens of the world.
Quitely, she continues to scribble on her notebook some more. Until someone eventually called her name.
She looked up. Her colleague waved, gesturing that they were about to wrap up. Ruolin nodded gently, pressing her pen into the center of her notebook and closing it with a soft thap, putting it inside her canvas bag.
As she moved to join the team, her breath caught slightly — not from the exertion, but from the sudden weight in her chest. Like something pressed faintly, stubbornly there. Again.
It had happened a few times lately.
Climbing stairs that used to feel easy. A quick errand that should feel like nothing. A strange tightness, like wearing a dress a size too small. But she said nothing. Because there was always work. Always tomorrow.
Her voice was still gentle when she spoke, like wind brushing through curtain threads as she approach Meng. "Do you want me to stay back and get a few more photos for the background article?"
Meng didn't look up as he adjusted the lens, but his reply came with a tired chuckle. "Only if you don't mind. The editor's been nagging me about 'contextual shots' again. He said our last piece was too clean."
Ruolin let out a soft laugh. "Too clean? That's a first."
Meng shrugged. "Apparently, heartwarming isn't enough anymore. Now they want 'atmosphere.' Whatever that means."
"Got it," she said, already adjusting the strap of her bag. "Then let me find some 'atmosphere' for you."
Ruolin lingered as the others began to pack.
She turned to the community courtyard once more, lifted her phone, and snapped one, two, three more photos with different angles. The light had shifted — softer now, warming the bricks and creeping along the faded mural on the wall.
A quote painted beneath it read:
"Let the morning light shine into your heart."
She blinked, read it twice. Then she reached for her notebook again and wrote:
"Even the quietest light still finds its way to warm the coldest corners."
She didn't know yet that this morning — this soft, ordinary, beautifully forgettable morning — would be the last one before she met him again.
But for now, she only felt the wind brushing past her sleeves.
And for now, that was enough.