When the Sycamore Leaves Fall

When the autumn wind blows the sycamore leaves across the roof of the teaching building, it always carries a subtle restlessness. Lin Wei from Class 3, Grade 2, is a girl who is used to sitting by the window. There are dried ginkgo leaves in her textbooks and her notebooks are filled with formulas, but she always stares at the old sycamore tree downstairs in a daze when she is distracted. Until Jiang Che, who always rushed into the classroom on the school bell, leaned against the railing outside her window when he was punished to stand, twirling his pen on his fingertips, and asked her with a smile: "Hey, look at the speed at which the leaves fall, does it count as free fall?" One is a "good student" who is wrapped up in discipline and is afraid of making mistakes, and the other is a "problem boy" who seems to be undisciplined but hides tenderness. Their trajectories begin to overlap in the autumn when the cicadas gradually stop singing. From the physics experiment where she was forced to form a team, to the unexpected companionship on campus late at night, Lin Wei gradually discovered the scars and dreams under Jiang Che's school uniform, and Jiang Che also understood the desire and timidity behind her silence. When sycamore leaves covered the entire runway, they finally understood that the most precious thing in youth is not the perfect answer, but the courage to catch the note with body temperature handed over by the other party, and the unspoken "me too" when walking side by side through the fallen leaves.