The Migrant Bird's Courier

That summer, a graduation trip went awry.

She was Wei Liangshu, the icy top student from Xizhong, with a soft pink rabbit hanging from her backpack.

He was Xu Zhouli, the legendary top student from Chuanzhong, who mistook her for someone else at first glance.

She thought he was “Zhao Liming,” there to accept an award for a friend.

He knew the truth, but couldn’t resist the clear, innocent look in her eyes when she called him the wrong name.

And so the misunderstanding between “Lili” and “Shushu” quietly took root.

“From now on, every migration season, let’s come here to collect our letters.”

It was a fairytale-like promise. Even as they spoke, they both knew how fragile it was.

In the years that followed, they really did both return.

But she always came in autumn, and he always came in the rainy season.

Like two flocks of migratory birds forever out of sync, passing at the same latitude without ever meeting.

Seven years later, he followed the trail to the Gobi, only to learn that she had gone missing and find a blank page of a letter.

And in the two letters they’d dropped into the mailbox at eighteen, never to be opened by anyone...

She wrote: “You are the wind of Qili.”

He wrote: “You are the spring I met on my migration.”

Some birds will pass by only once in your life, while some people become a distant place you can never return to.

Some springs pass by only once in a lifetime.

Some letters are written never to be sent.