Unsent Monsoon

Under the dim fluorescent lamp of City No. 3 Middle School, Lin Xiaoman's pencil tip stopped at the edge of the draft paper for the umpteenth time. The sound of Lu Chen turning the pages of a book in the front row always woke her up from her wandering thoughts earlier than the bell. The girl hid her thoughts in the middle of the sketchbook, and used an eraser to erase the names she had written over and over again. Little did she know that the back collar of the boy's school uniform was stained with the cherry blossom bookmark she had left behind, and it swayed gently every afternoon when he was busy writing at his desk. This secret love, which began in the late autumn of the second year of high school, is like the mottled countdown sign on the back wall of the classroom, quietly fading under the gaze day after day. Lin Xiaoman watched Lu Chen talk eloquently in the debate, sweat in the basketball game, fold all the heart-warming moments into paper airplanes and throw them at his desk, but never received a response. It wasn't until the evening when it was pouring with rain that she finally plucked up the courage to hand over the hand-knitted scarf, but she saw him smiling and taking the milk tea from the girl in the next class. During the evening self-study on the eve of the college entrance examination, Lu Chen stayed beside the mathematical formulas on the blackboard, and someone drew a crooked love heart. Lin Xiaoman tried to wipe it away with trembling fingers, but chalk dust fell into his eyes. She finally understood that the candy wrappers hidden in the exercise books, the shared headphone cables in the library, and the people who kept a three-step distance from each other on the way to school were all just her own chaos. Many years later, at a class reunion, Lin Xiaoman picked up an old diary under the old locust tree at his alma mater. Among the yellowed pages, Lu Chen's neat handwriting stopped at his senior year in high school: "Today she is looking at me again, but how should I say anything about the admission in the competition?" Next to the handwriting smudged by tears, there is a faded movie ticket - it is the one Lin Xiaoman secretly stuffed into the suitcase but never gave away. The evening breeze swept through the empty corridor, and the graffiti that once covered the walls had been painted over. Lin Xiaoman closed her diary and suddenly remembered the oath she wrote on the title page of her sketchbook one afternoon when cicadas were chirping noisily. It turns out that some thoughts will never reach the other side, just like the passing of the monsoon, leaving only traces of moisture and the words "I like you" that can never be said out. Intention: be