What is youth?
Youth is perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world. It represents the innocent, bewildered days of adolescence, boundless energy, passion burning like fire, an uninhibited spirit, and dreams that shine brilliantly. In the years of youth, even regret comes with a cathartic, all-consuming ache.
But the summer wind, carrying the song of cicadas, can shape the same youth into entirely different things. Not everyone gets to have a beautiful youth. Some people fade into dust during the years that should have burned brightest, living ordinary lives weighed down by insecurity.
A quiet, withdrawn girl had spent more than a decade living by the rules.
Then a fiery boy arrived with the summer wind, like a blaze racing across the plains. Dazzling and radiant, he crashed into her guarded heart, upending all her calm and setting her nerves ablaze.
She had once been confined to a tiny corner of the world, with her heart and eyes fixed on that brilliant flame.
Until one day, the girl who had been chasing the light finally became her own.
Only when she looked back did she realize that everyone else’s youth had its own beauty: breathtaking from afar, captivating up close.
It turned out that being eighteen was a dazzling, magnificent kind of beauty in itself, a heart moved anew with every passing year, a brightness that never faded.
