After She Turned Away, I Was Left Standing Still

"In the end, regret teaches us this: Love while you can. Don't wait until you've lost it to understand its worth."

Meng Xiang's youth began with stealing glances at Chen Xi's profile from the third row of their middle school classroom.

A shaft of sunlight through the window fell on her fingertips as she turned a page, and became part of the long obsession that would follow him. They reunited in high school, and he gathered the courage to get close to her. After evening study, they shared a pair of earphones in a little alley. They kissed beneath her university dorm, yet in the end, the sharp edges of adulthood and one hysterical argument brought their relationship to an abrupt end.

Chen Xi turned and disappeared into the crowd, while Meng Xiang stayed trapped where he was.

He turned away everyone who showed interest in him, distilled his memories into wine, and drank alone on sleepless nights. Her old fountain pen sat locked in a drawer. Unsent messages remained on his phone. Every corner of the city held fragments of their past. Then, three years later, news of her wedding appeared on his social media feed. In the photo, she smiled radiantly beside a man he didn't know. Only then did Meng Xiang realize that he hadn't been waiting for her to come back. He had simply lost the courage to move on.

This unrequited love, which began with a young boy's first stirrings of affection, ultimately became a great missed opportunity in the adult world.

Unfulfilled love is the footnote to youth; letting obsession become sorrow is the price of adulthood. For the rest of his life, he would pay for the words he couldn't bring himself to say that summer: "Don't go."