Duckweed

I think someone will understand. In those years that flowed like water, the moment we stopped kissing and met each other's eyes, the most beautiful scenes of my life came rushing at me all at once. At just the right time, amid flowing waters and passing years, we who had drifted east and west with the wind finally overlapped, reunited like eddies in the stream. I remember what you used to be like, what I used to be like, what we used to be like.

I can't shut out the love and desire I felt in my youth. I lose myself in it, and soon I'll be swept along by the current, flowing forward, never to return.

What brought me back was the mint on her breath, mint so cold it was almost icy. It really wasn't a flavor suited to losing yourself in passion. One light sting was all it took to clear my head.

That's right. I'm already an adult, a consummate liar, a fraud, a smooth operator who says one thing and means another. I can no longer be that child who could weather life's storms with an untainted heart, who could go through the world without losing her innocence.

If I weren't who I am now, I would want to become the person I wish I could be.

Yu Que once said she was curious about what I would be like when I grew up. This is what I'm like. Some things have changed, and some haven't.

I still love the you who hasn't changed. What about you?

What about you?

I have wanted to ask her that so many times.

Likewise, even though I know I have no right to ask her, still... what about you?

I stumbled back a step, gasping, unable to make sense of it all. I simply held her face, stroking it as I gazed into her beautiful, pool-like eyes, drifting aimlessly within them.

I don't want to drift anymore. I want someone to put down roots, tie me fast, and cling to me with fierce desperation.

"Do you want a hug?" she suddenly asked, opening her arms to me.

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"Will you love me for who I am, not who I was."

A line from a song I love

A story about growing up and the journey along the way

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[Reader's guide]

1. Happy ending

2. Switch, with a slight preference for the younger partner

3. First-person narration

Theme: Journeys end in lovers meeting