[Campus Group Portrait BE | Regretful Secret Love]
The September wind, carrying the sweetness of sweet-scented osmanthus, came in through the cracks in the window. There were fifty-four people sitting in the classroom of Grade 1 and Grade 3 of Lin'an Middle School. The electric fan was whirring and whirring, blowing away the smell of ink from new textbooks and the restless breathing of young people.
The head teacher said to choose a monitor.
A girl stood up in the third row by the window. Her hair is draped over her shoulders, with slightly curled ends, and a shallow dimple on her left cheek. She said "Hello everyone, my name is Shen Zhiyi", her voice was not loud, but the whole class was quiet.
Someone in the back row clapped, and the applause got louder and louder. She stood on the podium and smiled, her dimples sunken, and someone below said, "She looks so pretty when she smiles."
There was a boy in the corner who kept his head down the whole time. The collar of his school uniform is turned up, and the lenses of his glasses are so thick that they reflect light. When the class teacher read "Mathematics Class Representative - Student Xu Wangshu", he looked up suddenly, knocked over his pencil case with his elbow, and his pencil and compass fell to the floor.
The classroom burst into laughter.
He knelt down to pick it up, and the tips of his ears turned red.
Shen Zhiyi looked over from the podium, the corners of his mouth curved.
That was the fall of 2009.
No one knows——
Her deskmate later wrote 47 letters to her, none of which was sent.
No one knows——
This silent boy later sat in front of her hospital bed for three days and three nights, and his last words were "Don't leave."
No one even knows——
The summer she left, he burned all his letters and kept only one in an empty cigarette box.
That sentence was only two lines long.
"Xu Wangshu, it's too late."
"I will send it first in my next life."
Concept: Campus group portrait