(A youthful tragic romance, one heroine, the most devoted simp, guaranteed heartbreak) Novels are always so kind. They let people who missed their chance wander around until they meet again. Reality isn't like that. When you say goodbye to someone, you really may never see them again.
You once told me that as long as we're alive, we'll meet again someday. Back then, I believed you without a doubt. It wasn't until later that I understood: some missed chances last a lifetime.
My greatest regret is probably meeting the person I most wanted to love when I was too young to understand love. Ever since, I've never truly loved anyone else.
How lucky I was to have you in my youth, to share a summer filled with the incessant chirring of cicadas. We were together for only two years, yet I spent four whole years holding on to those feelings. Reality really is like that. Even if you've loved someone for four or five years, it may still mean nothing. Love cannot be sustained by one person's devotion alone. Only when two people move toward each other in love does it count.
You can do everything for someone who doesn't love you, and still never warm her heart. Someone who loves you will stay by your side without wavering, even when you make a mistake now and then.
Later, your shadow was everywhere in my world, but I never saw you again. Sadly, my writing is too clumsy. Even if I strike all twenty-six letters on the keyboard, I can't capture how dazzling you were in my youth, describe the thrill of that fleeting glance, or express the longing I keep buried deep in my heart.
But I've never regretted loving you.
This book is for my youth, which rushed by in a roar, and for you, the one in my youth who shone pure and bright as the moonlight.
