A Smile Over the Shoulder

That day, the sky was blue. They sat side by side in the physics competition examination room. A breeze lifted the girl’s long hair, smooth, light, and fragrant. Her hair drifted gently in the wind, yet perhaps it was not long enough, or perhaps the wind was blowing the wrong way, because it could never quite touch the boy’s arm at the next desk. He kept his eyes lowered and silently worked through the problems, completely undisturbed by anything around him. At some point, the boy and girl both fell asleep with their heads on the desk, in the same posture and facing the same direction. The test papers fluttering in the breeze were covered in numbers and formulas. The invigilator gave a soft cough. “Those who have finished, check your work carefully. Don’t do anything else.” The boy and girl seemed to wake up, raising their heads blankly to look at the invigilator. Then, in perfect unison, they turned the other way and fell asleep again in the same posture as before. Their perfectly synchronized movements seemed as though they had come from a single person, yet the corners of the two test papers fluttering in the wind bore two entirely different names. One was Xiao Ziyuan. The other was Sui Yi. In that young and beautiful time, so long ago, they had already been this perfectly in sync. That was when we first met, and I never imagined you would become so important to me. We were both young when we first met, but before either heart had made a promise, who fell first?