An Unfamiliar Heart

“Only now do I understand that regret is always wrapped up in the intensity of youth. The person I was, lost in the mists of the past, doesn’t have to stay trapped in regret. Summer crushes, confessed love, and missed chances may all be footnotes to growing up. There’s no need to overthink them or wonder why. Just remember that tingling itch when the summer breeze brushed your cheeks.” Years later, after Ji Nanyi wrote the final sentence, he closed his notebook and rubbed his tired eyes. The wind rustled through the pages before they settled on the title page: three little figures holding hands, their fluttering hems drawn as if they were about to run right off the paper. Ji Nanyi, Lin Xia, and Chen Yutong first met by the back door of their classroom in late spring. Lin Xia was on tiptoe, reaching for the blackboard eraser, when Chen Yutong reached out to steady her. Ji Nanyi was beside them, picking up the chalk she had knocked to the floor. Their three hands briefly touched in midair, like three shooting stars crashing into one another’s youth. They shared half an eraser by the track, discussed wrong answers under the moonlight after evening study, and watched one another grow from children with pigtails into teenagers with secrets. But youth is never a perfectly smooth glass marble. It always gets chipped and cracked: a notebook thrown to the floor during an argument, a hallway deliberately avoided during a cold war, and an “I’m sorry” stuck in someone’s throat. “That summer, it wasn’t only the time I spent with you that ended. My whole youth, along with you, came to an end.”