The Third Autumn

Youthful campus romance / Reunion after a long separation / Clear-headed, ambitious heroine and carefree puppy-like hero (golden retriever energy) / Growing up (the heroine gradually leaves her county town for places farther away, and finds her true self beyond the suffocating pressure of achievement-oriented competition)

We met in autumn, fell in love in autumn, and broke up in autumn. When the third autumn after that comes, will you still want to see me again?, November 27, 2027. I'm sorry. More than being with you, I want to go somewhere farther away, where the future and the scenery I long for are waiting.

What could that great future possibly be, that made me miss every autumn with you?, November 23, 2028. The weather in Sydney is lovely. Zhang Suiyang, are you doing well? The plane trees on campus must have started shedding their leaves.

That day, on Yuyuan Road in Shanghai, in the season when plane tree leaves drift down, we actually met again in the third autumn we had missed each other., November 25, 2030. Zhang Suiyang... Long time no see.

Every school has its prominent figures, campus belles, top students, and bullies. But there are always quiet people, so quiet that hardly anyone notices them.

Xu Anhuan was one such ordinary girl, so ordinary that few people ever noticed her, and no one asked what her dreams were.

What were dreams?

For a student at a high school in a small county town, a dream meant getting into a good university, leaving home, and going somewhere farther away. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen: anywhere would be better than this little county town.

Xu Anhuan thought she would spend her youth quietly like this, sitting in a corner and drawing pictures no one appreciated.

Until one person suddenly barged into her quiet youth.

Plane tree leaves carpeted the ground in autumn. In a phone booth in Shanghai, Xu Anhuan dialed a number. A minute passed, but no one picked up.

She sighed and hung up the receiver, but the moment she turned around, her breath caught.

Under the warm yellow light, a familiar yet unfamiliar figure stood not far away, wearing a crisp black coat. The few unruly curls on his head were as stubborn as she remembered. He looked at her, his smile still impossibly bright, as if he had crossed countless quiet autumns to reach her.

"Long time no see, Xu."

Her eyes, quietly reddening, were reflected in the glass of the phone booth.

A short story about a girl from an ordinary county town growing up and her first love. Happy ending.

"There is someone in this world who lives in my spirited youth.", "So Many People in This World" by Karen Mok

Note: The high school is set in one of China's four northern provinces. I dedicate this story to my miserable, stifling high school years, battered by the Hengshui Model and the pandemic. They are days I never want to return to.

Theme: No matter the storms, always keep moving forward.