She Once Passed Through My Summer

[Youth + Healing + Bittersweet Beauty + Obsession Turned into Poetry]

Song Weilan first met Lu Zhao on a basketball court during a torrential downpour. The boy was soaked from head to toe, yet his smile shone brighter than the sun. She gripped her backpack strap, her heart pounding wildly.

Back then, she was the “perfect honor student” in everyone’s eyes: always at the top of her class, always impeccably mannered. But no one knew she kept a diary in her desk drawer filled with Lu Zhao’s name, along with a movie ticket she had never given him.

On the night the college entrance exams ended, Song Weilan made a decision.

On the first day of university, Lu Zhao ran into a familiar figure at the freshman registration desk.

“Song Weilan?” He grabbed her wrist in disbelief. “Weren’t you going abroad?”

The girl tilted her head and smiled, her eyes sparkling with a slyness he had never seen before. “Who told you that? I’ve been waiting for you all along.”

She had changed.

She would sneak sips of his cola, drag him off to skip class on rainy days, and jump on his back to mess with him while he was shooting hoops.

But whenever Lu Zhao tried to hold her hand for a photo, she would always smile and dodge him. “I’m not photogenic.”

It wasn’t until that day, when a bus sped past, that Lu Zhao finally understood:

Why her student ID photo was blank.

Why her textbooks never went beyond senior year.

Why she had said…

“Seeing you again is already a miracle.”