On the first day of the first year of high school, Chen Xiaojie bumped into someone's arms at the corner of the corridor with a stack of books. She looked up and saw Xu Jueqiu's smiling eyes. Sunlight poured in from the window behind her, dyeing the cuffs of her white shirt light gold, as if she had fallen into the light of a whole summer.
Later, Chen Xiaozhen became the "pistachio" who followed Xu Chuangqiu. He would tell cold jokes in different ways, hand her water with the unscrewed bottle cap after she finished playing ball, fold notes with "like" written on them into stars, and secretly stuff them into her pencil case. Her love was too blatant. In the recess line, her eyes were always glued to Xu Zhuoqiu's back across the crowd; during class meetings, she held up the microphone and said, "I most want to be at the same table with Xu Zhuoqiu."
Xu Jueqiu is recognized as the little sunshine. He is gentle to everyone. He will rub Chen Xiaojie's hair and say, "Why do you always look like a child that has not grown up?" But the light in her eyes was so uniform that it illuminated Chen Xiaojie and the girl from the next class who was always waiting for her by the basketball court.
The wind in the senior year of high school swept the test papers across the corridor. Chen Xiaoqiu clutched the written confession letter and met Xu Jueqiu under the camphor tree behind the teaching building. The other person was lowering his head and listening to his cell phone, with the corners of his mouth curved in a soft curve that she had never seen before. When he hung up the phone and turned around, the light in his eyes didn't have time to stop when he bumped into Chen Xiaozhen, and then slowly faded into his usual gentleness: "Wait for me?"
Chen Xiaojie stuffed the letter into her pocket, her fingertips clenched until she finally said, "The teacher asked you to go to the office."
After Xu Jueqiu left, Chen Xiaojie stood under the tree for a long time, watching the crumpled paper corners protruding from his pocket, like a butterfly with broken wings. The little sun has never left this city, but her light has already chosen another corner to illuminate.
Many years later at a class reunion, someone pointed out the window and said, "Isn't that Xu Chuoqiu?" Chen Xiaoji followed his gaze and saw that she was holding an umbrella for the person next to her. The profile of her face was almost the same as in high school.
Someone bumped her arm: "Don't you want to say hello?"
Chen Xiaojie's hand while peeling the orange paused, and the juice splashed on her fingertips, as if she was choking unspokenly that year. She smiled and swallowed the sourness: "No," when she raised her eyes, the figure outside the window had gone away, "The position next to her is no longer mine."
The light that once illuminated her entire youth was always there, but it never really shined for her.
Concept: Love in youth may not always come true, and some heartbeats are destined to be a grand and lonely journey. Just like a sunflower always facing the sun, but unable to retain the afterglow of the setting sun - not all "blatant" things can wait for exclusive responses. Those unspoken words hidden in time are themselves the truest footnotes of youth.