The seventeen-year-old's chirping of cicadas drowned out the entire midsummer, but Su Yang didn't wait for Lin Zhiyi's words "I like you."
The news of her death was like a pale notice, stuffed into the carnival of the graduation season. It rained heavily that day, washing away the graffiti on the side of the playground, and also washed away the crumpled love letter in his pocket - which he was going to give to her at the graduation ceremony, and the paper was still stained with the scent of her favorite gardenia perfume.
Many years later, Lu Huai always returned to that summer in his dreams. He sat in the last row of the classroom and watched Lin Zhiyi drawing by the window. The wind blew her broken hair to her cheeks. She turned back and smiled at him, revealing a pair of shallow dimples. But every time he woke up from the dream, he was only accompanied by the sketchbook on the desk that she had not finished drawing. The edges of the drawing paper were yellowed, and the last page always stopped at half a gardenia that had not bloomed.
He locked all the memories about her into the locker, but he couldn't lock the gap in his heart that would never heal. After all, some farewells are so hasty that even saying "goodbye" becomes a luxury.
Purpose: Taking the abrupt farewell in the midsummer of seventeen as an incision, using unspoken confessions, unfinished gardenias and memories washed away by the rain, it reveals the regretful nature of "too late" in youth, explores the fatalistic sense of "missing out is eternity" in young emotions, and ultimately leaves behind the regret and nostalgia for a brief but profound campus love.