When Cicada Wings Gently Fall

At seventeen, the distance between the desks in front and behind them was thirty centimeters.

At twenty-four, it had become three thousand kilometers.

They once shared a water cup and spent countless days together at school, believing the future was like a math problem: follow the right steps, and you were sure to find the answer.

Until reality taught them:

Some auxiliary lines can be drawn with perfect precision and still cannot connect two worlds drifting farther apart;

Some promises can be made with all sincerity and still cannot withstand the erosion of time and distance.

From school to the working world, from ideals to reality, they carried traces of each other as they followed separate paths through life. The longing they never voiced eventually became a number in their contacts that would never be dialed.