The Old Tricycle Driver's 'Coarse Cloth Gloves'

Beside the bus station in the old town, eighty-year-old Xu, known as Old Xu, had pulled a tricycle his entire life. Under his passenger seat, there was always a pair of women's gloves, sewn from coarse cloth, outdated in style yet washed immaculately clean. Every day, while cleaning his tricycle, Old Xu would carefully take out the gloves to sun them, but he never let anyone touch them. Behind these gloves lay a lifelong secret buried deep in Old Xu's heart. Many years ago, Old Xu was a young tricycle puller. During a harsh winter, a rural female teacher, newly arrived in town, became his regular customer. The teacher was kind-hearted, always giving Old Xu a little extra change each time she rode. Seeing Old Xu's hands red and chapped from the cold, she specially bought some fabric and, using her evenings, sewed him a pair of gloves. Old Xu was filled with gratitude and quietly developed feelings for her. He used his own savings to pick out a pair of exquisite cotton gloves, intending to give them to her on her birthday. However, that day, the female teacher went to a more remote mountainous area to respond to rural aid efforts and tragically died in a landslide shortly after. Old Xu never even got to see her one last time, and the cotton gloves were never delivered. From that day on, Old Xu never married. He stayed in this small town, quietly pulling his tricycle for decades, and anonymously donated all his savings to the rural primary school that the female teacher cared so much about, helping dozens of impoverished children complete their education. It wasn't until Old Xu passed away that people, while sorting through his belongings, discovered the pair of gloves and a long-yellowed photograph in a treasured tin box.