In the summer of 1998, five girls in Class 2 of Senior Year Three at Jianghuai No. 1 High School faced the final stretch before the college entrance exams.
Wang Yun was beautiful, but came from a poor family. She played the boys against one another, using her looks to pave her way forward. She knew all too well that this was her only ticket out of the produce market. Sun Xuefang was top of her grade. Her father had broken his leg, and her mother's medicine jar was empty; she used her studies to suppress every longing. Quiet as a plant, Lü Jing kept more than three hundred letters to the same boy locked in her drawer, none of them ever sent. Li Na was bold and passionate, loving and hating without reservation, and believed love could fill every hole in her heart. Chang Juxia was always the most tactful one, smiling as she handed out tissues, broke up arguments, and smoothed things over, while keeping a meticulous tally in her heart.
They skipped class, drank, and shared their deepest thoughts, believing their youth would never end. Then Wang Yun got involved in Li Na's romance, Chang Juxia spread rumors behind her back, Sun Xuefang said something hurtful, and Lü Jing's world quietly collapsed. The college entrance exams fell like a blade, splitting their fates into five paths: one stayed behind, one went far away, one married, one wandered, and one lived through manipulation as the very person she had never wanted to become.
Ten years later, reunited by the river, they finally understood: the love and hate of those years had been no more than a wave in the river of time. True growth meant carrying your wounds and continuing forward.
