Before Our Paths Crossed

If we are sorry about this book, it is that we, like Jiang Yubai, already know the ending of "Not Enough to Meet". But it is this sense of prophecy that runs throughout, giving every moment of his efforts and every beat of his heart a layer of tragic tenderness. We no longer look forward to a happy ending, but are intoxicated by the process itself - watching how a young man refines a hopeless relationship into an inner light that illuminates his own progress. This book may not be about love, but a poetics of growth. It tells us that the most precious emotions in youth may not necessarily go in both directions; those deepest "likes" may not point to anyone in the end, but guide us on how to better move towards ourselves.

"Not Encountered" is not a simple secret love story, it is my long gaze on a kind of "rational sinking" - what I want to describe is how a soul like Jiang Yubai falls into an unsolvable emotion with the sobriety of calculating scores, and carries out the most irrational inner revolution in the consciousness of the "spectator". Xu Xi's existence has never been the goal he pursues, but the most dazzling frame of reference he encounters by chance on the way to find his own trajectory; her perfection and self-sufficiency allow this one-way gaze to maintain the aesthetic purity and the coldness of fate. The title of the book "Not Encountered" is the core metaphor of the whole story: it describes a dynamic approach full of precise efforts but destined to end in deviation, just like the orbits of celestial bodies that can be calculated but can never coincide. Those silent details - the comparison of grade differences, the peculiarities of thinking that were pointed out in class, the fleeting reflection in her eyes when we brushed shoulders - are all the "emotional physics" I am trying to construct, giving an observable carrier to the indescribable throbbing. Ultimately, this story is written to all those who have silently measured the distance from someone and completed a grand but silent ceremony in their hearts; it is about regret, and more about how to complete a silent, inward growth in the journey of acknowledging the intersection of eternal difficulties.