When Shen Shutong held the yellowed "Selected Poems of Byron" and smashed into the shadow of the phoenix tree, Jiang Yubai was using his competition registration form to make an origami boat. The well-known physics genius in the province leaned against the mottled railings of the rooftop, with a pen dripping ink hanging from his fingertips, drawing red circles on the translation of Shen Shutong's sonnets.
"The rhyme of the third paragraph is wrong." Jiang Yubai threw the paper boat into the rain, and the ink stains spread on Shen Shutong's rain-wet shirt. "Byron would have crawled out of Westminster Abbey if he saw this translation of yours."
When Lin Jingque, the ace of the debating club, kicked open the iron gate of the rooftop, he saw two people grabbing the torn registration form in the standing water. Song Guanqi, captain of the track and field team, held four transparent umbrellas and watched the sycamore leaves split the teenagers into pieces of light and shadow.
From then on, the differential equations in the physics laboratory were tainted with the fragrance of poetry manuscripts, and the Greek myths in the library were mixed with jazz scores. In the piano room on a winter night, Jiang Yubai unbuttoned Shen Shutong's second button and found a scalded sycamore leaf scar hidden under his collarbone; in the morning of the storm, Lin Jingque tore up the transportation agreement and carved the names of the four people into the annual rings of the century-old tung tree.
When the ribbons from the national competition awards ceremony fell all over Qitong Tower, the teenagers wrote the final chapter on the new leaves of the sycamore tree. Jiang Yubai clenched Shen Shutong's trembling fingertips, Lin Jingque and Song Guanqi's red ribbons were wrapped around the test papers, and they heard the echoes of youth resounding through the corridor of time.
"Then I will wait for the sycamore tree to grow new leaves and midsummer to come, young me and you."
Intention: Love takes root and sprouts, and sees the light of day again
