Summer Solstice, Year Eleven

[Carefully revised on July 7, 2023, with 25,000 new words. The additions aren’t in pirated copies. Please support the official version.] “I like his name. I love being alive, though I was born in this time.” · A former high school classmate got married, and that day everyone gathered for a reunion at a friend’s house. Somehow, they started talking about the foolish, romantic, secret things they’d done as students. When it was Xia Li’s turn, she said, “On his birthday, I abused my position at the school radio station and played songs all afternoon by his favorite singers.” Someone asked who “he” was. Xia Li smiled but wouldn’t say. Partway through the gathering, she went to the restroom and nearly collided with someone coming out of the next room. It was Yan Sishi. He looked down at her, his gaze deep. “So it was you.” · “From Chucheng to Nancheng, from Nancheng to Beicheng, from Beicheng to Los Angeles. To get closer to you, I crossed three thousand days and nights, ten thousand kilometers. But you don’t need to know, because I’m about to forget you.” · “Six years after graduation, I still dream about him. I hated geography back then, but I was the class geography representative for two years. That was because the humanities teachers’ office was on the way past his classroom. Carrying a stack of books, my heart felt both heavy and light, as if I were keeping a tremendous secret. Later, as I moved between the gray office towers of business parks, I often thought of the past. I’ll never have feelings that pure again: not in that year, not at sixteen, not in the summer that boy came into my life.” - Reader’s guide: *Secret love comes true / each other’s first love / happy ending *Reserved / slow burn / understated / school days in the first half, city life in the second - Note: The romance takes place after both leads reach adulthood. The cover font and image are free for commercial use. Theme: Learning changes your fate