Mirror Lake

In September 2010, the new Jinghu campus of Ningcheng Medical College was completed and opened. Li Jingming, a repeat student, dragged his faded snakeskin bag and stood in front of the more than 170-ton bluestone, wondering what the future would bring. At the fellow meeting, he met two girls: Chen Xinran, who loves to laugh, and Song Yutong, who is alienated. Because all his roommates were in love, he started a relationship with Chen Xinran in a daze, but as they spent time together, he gradually realized that the person in his heart was Song Yutong, who was always looking down at his phone. After the breakup, he and Song Yutong started to send private messages on Tieba and gradually got closer. Walks on the playground, birthday scarves, night runs in Yancheng, confessions from the whole class... He waited again and again, and was pushed away again and again. On that night of the forced kiss, she pushed him away and ran away, and the two lost contact. Until her trip to Jinan, she said, "Just friends." The sun rises on Mount Tai, Fangte laughs, they walk through their senior year like friends, and then go their separate ways. He went to Quancheng, and after a few years of wandering around, he was admitted to the career department, returned to a small town not far from her hometown to work, got married and had children. She stayed in Ningcheng and worked as a nurse for a patient in the hospital - the man who asked his family to bring chicken soup every night. In 2026, he returned to his alma mater, Jinghu. Standing by the circular water system, looking at the Twin Star Bridge sixteen years ago, I remembered what she said: People are like water, they come from a small place and don't know where they end up. The water is still flowing, but the people have dispersed. It's already good if it can flow through you. This is a story about missing and growing up, written for those of us who lived by Mirror Lake in those years.