[Eight years of online friendship only · Three journeys across cities · Mutual secret crush, bittersweet regret]
[An insecure, slow-to-warm girl from Yuncheng x a gentle, restrained boy who keeps making the journey]
He had a girlfriend, so I kept my distance and stayed just an ordinary online friend on the other side of the screen.
But with only a few photos to go on, he came to my city three times:
From Bincheng to Yuncheng, gazing from outside my high school gates;
From Jincheng to Huaicheng, lingering for twenty minutes outside my university;
Saving up for a visit, only to rush home because of family matters.
Every journey was a secret.
I was trapped in my insecurity, unable to move forward, while he hid his feelings and took ninety-nine steps toward me.
Eight years later, the truth came out. He had already set off toward a new happiness, leaving me only one sentence: "Don't look back. Be brave."
This youthful story of journeys across mountains and seas, guided by photographs, was destined to remain an unfulfilled longing between two screens.
The real novel is my real experience, of course, the reality can only be worse than this. Why did I write this novel? Because I am a person who likes to read novels. I like to read about the lives of male and female protagonists in books, because my life is very ordinary. Before, I always thought that he who I liked did not like me, so I chose to stay with him as a friend. I knew that friends of the opposite sex would not last long, but compared to me and him, I could accept it in the future. So after I found out that he was in love, I felt more regretful. I regretted that he didn't like me, but I was also happy that he had found a good person, because liking him doesn't necessarily mean having him. If he is happy, I will be happy. But I suddenly realized that the relationship between the two of us was not what I thought. It turned out that he also liked me at that time and had done so much for me. Now thinking about our past, I can detect his feelings, but at that time, I may have been unable to let go of my inferiority complex and did not notice it. I have been thinking about it since I found out. He obviously had many opportunities to come to me, but he never implemented it once. Until the two of us chatted not long ago, I understood. It turned out that he wanted to confess but I didn't have any reaction or response. He didn't dare to move forward for fear of being rejected. And I, the protagonist, didn't notice his confession or his liking from beginning to end. Two people just missed it. I didn't write this novel for anything other than to commemorate my youth, commemorate the person I met during the best time in my life, and commemorate the only person I loved in the past 20 years.