Song Liushui & Jiang Yue
"That early summer, the phoenix tree leaves hid a hundred confessions we never dared to say aloud."
In September, sunlight streamed through the gauze curtains, casting mottled shadows. Jiang Yue was tracing the phoenix tree leaves outside her window with a fountain pen. Ink spread across the paper in a pool of deep blue.
The door opened softly. A boy stood silhouetted against the light, his school uniform collar slightly open, a small patch of sunlight resting on his collarbone.
"My name is Song Liushui." His voice was like a clear mountain spring. "'I see the Yangtze carrying the flowing waters.'"
She looked up. The fountain pen nib snapped against the paper with a pop. The boy happened to glance over, his eyelashes turning translucent gold in the sunlight, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
At the literary club, she hung the photos she had developed on a clothesline: the hem of his shirt flaring as he shot a basket, his brow slightly furrowed as he read. And beneath the phoenix tree, when he bent to pick up her poetry collection, the flecks of sunlight caught in his hair.
"Taking photos of your classmate Liushui again?"
The photos scattered across the floor. One landed face down, revealing the boy's elegant handwriting on the back: "For the moon hiding behind the camera."
On graduation day, she ran into him at the corner. He had grown much thinner, his right hand braced against the wall, his knuckles white.
"You..."
"I'm fine." He quickly lowered the hand that had been rubbing his right leg, his smile unchanged. "Jiang Yue, which university are you going to apply to?"
A phoenix tree leaf fell between them.
When she counted to the ninety-ninth leaf, a gust of wind swept the last one from sight behind the eaves.
"The greatest regret in this world isn't missing your chance, but knowing we could have been."
