At seventeen, Ning Jia was sent to live alone in Moon Bay.
On her first day at her new school, she noticed the boy in the back row, whose uniform zipper was never done up.
He would shove an umbrella into her arms on a rainy night and find her, afraid of the dark, in a blackout stairwell.
Yet he would also step back whenever she approached and look away whenever she turned toward him.
Ning Jia thought he probably didn't like her.
But how else could she explain the bandages, hand warmers, and lychee candies he left for her under the excuse of "just happening to have some"?
Thankfully, senior year was about more than these unspoken feelings.
Her deskmate would drag her off to grab sausages from the school shop. The girl in front would print three copies of her notes and hand one to each of them. The wontons at the snack shop at the end of the alley always tasted the same.
The six of them studied together, took the long way home together, and sang together at the New Year's Eve party.
They shared the most ordinary, yet most radiant, youth.
Until the boy who always looked after everyone never came back after one particular day.
His last words to them all were: "Wait for me in Nanchuan."
The feelings they discovered at eighteen were never spoken aloud by any of them.
But the parting that came that year arrived sooner than anyone's.
[Coming of Age] [Secret Crush Becomes Mutual] [Ensemble Cast, Tearjerker] [Everyday School Life] [A Mutual Journey Toward Each Other]
