In May of her final year of high school, Xu Tang saw the word "Xi'an" on Jiang Xu's mock college application form.
Yet the previous summer, they had stood beside a bus stop and promised to go to Shanghai together someday.
Xu Tang always remembered the boy who took the blame for a bag of roasted chestnuts for her that winter in their second-to-last year of high school.
She remembered their first movie date, when three buses came and went, but neither of them could bear to leave first.
And she remembered him standing by the classroom bookshelf in their final year, earnestly asking her:
"Xu Tang, what do you think we are to each other now?"
Back then, they believed that if you liked someone, you could go anywhere together.
Then the college entrance exams drew closer.
Xu Tang wanted to go to Shanghai and keep writing the things she loved.
But Jiang Xu gradually realized that the architecture he truly wanted to study had promising opportunities in another city.
Neither of them had done anything wrong, yet for the first time, they didn't know how to face each other.
This was Xu Tang's first love, and the summer she most hated to leave behind at the age of seventeen.
Theme: Learn to express yourself honestly in youth and love, respect each other's choices, and bravely follow your own path in life.
