After seventeen years of being a model student, Wu Tong was tired. Then Zhan Xuan appeared.
He led her into mischief and kept her company as she did things she had never dared imagine, so that years later she could stand tall and say her youth had been wild and free.
But no matter how wildly you live, you cannot escape the fate of returning to reality.
During the mandatory quarantine in 2020, I looked out the window and saw the blazing sun fall on a French parasol tree, a little droopy but not yet defeated. I remembered that year: sweat-scented grass, books that reeked of frustration, a football kicked askew, and the corridors where we brushed past one another.
Dedicated to my high school years. May those flowers scattered across the world remain full of life and continue to bloom beautifully.
(The embarrassing part is that when I went to see the tree after quarantine, I realized it wasn't a French parasol tree. It was a tree I didn't recognize.)
Theme: We cannot escape the wildness of rules and conventions, yet we cannot bear to part with a youth full of flaws and virtues.
