I Was There in Your Youth

Chen Yu first met Su Wan in a crowded old bookstore in the height of summer.

He was carrying a stack of yellowed art books when he turned and bumped into her, sending the pages scattering across the floor. The boy bent down to gather them, then looked up and met her quiet gaze. A breeze blew in through the open wooden window, stirring the pages and leaving a faint impression in his heart. Back then, they were both trapped in the confusion of adolescence. One was used to hiding his feelings in art books; the other quietly worked through her emotions alone in a corner.

They gradually grew closer, sharing songs through their earphones and walking side by side in the evening breeze after school. They wrote little wishes on scraps of paper during evening study. For a brief time, they were the gentlest comfort in each other's gloomy lives. They didn't need to promise a distant future or insist on staying together forever. When they met, they simply happened to catch each other's loneliness, which had nowhere else to go.

But youth rarely gives us a choice. Further education, family, and the different paths their lives took became a chasm between them. There were no furious arguments or melodramatic misunderstandings. They simply drifted apart. Their conversations grew fewer, their encounters more awkward, until at last they quietly lost each other in the crowd.

Many years after they parted, Su Wan would sometimes think of that summer: the pages scattered in the old bookstore, the streets they had walked together at dusk. She no longer wondered why they hadn't made it to the end, and no longer clung to the hope of a perfect ending.

Chen Yu still traveled far and wide with his camera, capturing countless sunsets and evening breezes. He simply never again met someone with whom he could share a quiet moment like that.

It turned out not every encounter was meant to reach its conclusion. Some people come into your life not to stay forever, but to walk with you through a difficult stretch and teach you how to fall for someone, how to feel tenderness.

As the years passed and life carried them through its ups and downs, they each set off on a different path and found a life of their own. When they thought of each other again, there was no resentment in their hearts, only a faint sense of acceptance.

There's no need to regret that they couldn't stay together.

In this vast sea of people, they met briefly and lit the way for each other for a while.

That was enough.

I'm glad I was part of your youth.

Theme: Urban healing