Against the Light · One Summer

Against the Light · One Summer is the opening volume of the "Against the Light" short-story collection edited by the youth campus author Mu Xia, published by Knowledge Press in 2009. Themed on summer, light and shadow, and the feelings of youth, the book collects short stories and side stories by Mu Xia herself and more than a dozen light-novel authors, among them Mi Mila, Xiao Nizi, Taozi Xia, Naonao, Jumu, Xiaoyan, wins, Ruixi, Tu Xiaoxian, Changkong Weilu, Xiaohua, and Molizai Zi, arranged under sections such as "Main Melody," "Faint Light and Shadow," "Sweet Delights," and "Stillness." The opening piece, Living in the Memories of That Time, is Mu Xia's own account of a boy's memories of the summer when he was sixteen; Violet tells of an obscure wild vegetable, violet, growing in the fields; the remaining works revolve around meetings, confessions, friendship, and small private feelings in youth, offering both warm, sweet campus daily life and youthful crushes tinged with regret. Together the short pieces form a montage of youth belonging to one summer, with the image of shooting against the light running throughout: bright enough to sting the eyes, yet always with a corner hidden in shadow. As the first volume of the "Against the Light" series, One Summer sets the series' delicate, realistic, faintly melancholy tone, which subsequent volumes such as Against the Light · Cold Cicada and Against the Light · Fireflies continue.