Campus/Two male protagonists/Growth and redemption/Youth pain
In the morning light filtered by the carved curtains, the school bully Bai Jingchu used rebellion as an armor, hiding the void of lack of love in cigarette boxes and bruises. On the surface, he looks like a gangster wearing a riveted school uniform and puffing away at the sand pit, but in reality he is a lonely boy holding a silver medal and waiting for his parents. And Ye Hongjiang is like a fire under the iceberg. When the pages of "Walden Pond" pass by the boy's eyelashes, the smell of cedar perfume and tobacco are intertwined in the sunset, and the two scarred souls quietly get closer during basketball games, monthly exam rankings, and rooftop conversations.
The author uses images such as "broken golden sunshine", "steamy pear soup" and "strawberry candy wrapper" to string together the broken daily life, burying the pain of the original family in the crisp sound of the glass of Bai Jingchu's desk lamp when he smashes it, and oozes warmth in Aunt Chen's concern hidden in the grapefruit seed amulet. Under the setting of dual academic masters, it is not the conventional practice of answering questions side by side, but Bai Jingchu's paranoia of "I want to provoke you" to crack open the scars under Ye Molan's "iceberg" - when the class teacher's criticism turns into the sunset at the end of the corridor, when braised pork and vegetable leaves meet on the dinner plate, under the thorny shell, is the tenderness of the two teenagers licking each other's wounds.
The long jump sand pit in the humid rainy season, the metaphor of leaving a lamp in the high school entrance examination essay, and the punk rivets hidden in the cuffs of the school uniform, all the details hide the grainy feeling of youth in the late 1990s. There is no bloody abortion, only the heart palpitations hidden in the childish voice "Mom, look at me", the cold silence of the knife and fork hitting the porcelain plate during the video call, and the sudden soreness in the eyes when the candy wrapper is torn open. Those unspeakable "thank you" and "sorry" finally turned into a sentence in the shadow of the camphor tree: "It turns out that you, like me, are waiting for the light to come."
Intention: meet, get acquainted, get acquainted, fall in love, say goodbye, reunite, reminisce, get married