On the first day of school, Lin Zhi sat in the third-to-last seat by the window, with Jiang Yu sitting in front of her.
He was the school's top student, an aloof academic prodigy who rarely spoke and always rolled his shirt cuffs up to his wrists. She was a quiet girl who had come from a small town. Her one talent was drawing cats in the corners of her rough-work sheets.
The distance between their seats was barely thirty centimeters.
She thought those thirty centimeters were the greatest distance between them. Only later did she realize that the real distance was a thousand kilometers apart, the uncertainty of entering the workplace, and all the words they wanted to say but never did.
But there would always be someone who showed up when she needed him most.
The second button on the day of the college entrance exam, a late-night train ticket that winter in her freshman year, the first pot of congee they burned in their rented apartment, their wedding on the Spring Equinox.
He said, “I'm not very good at talking.”
She said, “Then take your whole life to learn how.”
From school uniforms to wedding dresses, from seventeen to gray hair.
We wrote each other into a diary, one that grew thicker and thicker.
