On the first day of her freshman year of high school, Chen Nian pushed open the door to Dorm Room 506 and met three girls who would change her life.
Chun Lei wore her hair in a ponytail tied with an orange elastic. She talked like a machine gun, yet late at night she would sit alone, staring blankly at her empty home. The aloof top student, Li Xiuli, kept everyone at a distance, but she would get up in the middle of the night to bandage her roommates with a skill that seemed far beyond that of a sixteen-year-old girl. Zhang Hua, with her tan skin and short hair, played basketball like a fierce little leopard, but after spraining her ankle, she bit down on the edge of her quilt and quietly sucked in her breath.
Four girls with very different personalities went from strangers to family, spending three years filling their youth with a whole “power bank” of memories: sour plum drink on the cafeteria’s third floor, a prank under the power lines with an umbrella, standing up for one another in front of the corner store, and the unspoken reluctance to part that filled their dorm on the night before the college entrance exam.
There was a deskmate named Lu Jinghe, who used crooked little smiley faces to coax her into talking every day. There was a boy in a white shirt, Ouyang Kai, who crouched down and carried her on his back at her most wretched moment, only to become the center of a rumor storm later on. And there was a promise, “From school uniforms to white hair,” scattered across four cities, yet never truly far away.
They would all live up to their youth.
This is a story about friendship, growing up, and saying goodbye. It is for everyone who ever whispered late-night conversations after the dorm lights went out, for everyone who turned their roommates into family, and for everyone who cried, laughed, and truly lived through their youth.
Theme: youth, friendship, growth, secret crushes, farewells, and reunions
