It rained on the day we were assigned to our sophomore-year classes. I found my name on the list for the regular class and took a seat by the back door, with no plans to get to know anyone.
On the first day of school, a boy in a white shirt borrowed all my history textbooks. He'd misread his timetable, and only realized when he returned them. I didn't hear a single word of class that day. My mind was full of him.
Later, he told me his name was Lu Zhao. But when I wrote it down, I wrote "Lu Chao," using the character for "morning" as in "morning sun." It was a one-character mistake, but I remembered it for a long time, until I could no longer tell whether I liked his real name or the one I'd gotten wrong.
During training for the sports meet, he ran lap after lap of the 1,500 meters with me. He also stood me up once, then carried me from the track to the infirmary when I felt at my worst. He said he didn't want to neglect me, but stopped halfway through what he was saying.
I wanted to ask, but I didn't dare. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, even the little distance between us would disappear.
Later, I heard about a girl named Xin Yue, about the confession Zhao Qing had kept hidden for half a year, and about how he had begun to doubt himself, wondering if he should never have been kind to anyone in the first place.
Then, one evening during winter break, he stopped me at the school gates and told me not to get cold. After that, he slowly finished what he had left unsaid.
He said we could talk about the future when it came. And at last, I learned to do something I had never dared to do before:
Speak up.
Theme: Someone afraid to get close and someone afraid of hurting others finally learn to do the same thing: speak up.
