In Those Years, We Were Very Shy

In the spring of 1980, seventeen-year-old Lin Mo met Su Xiao in the county middle school shaded by thousand-year-old banyan trees. He is a simple young man who came from the countryside, and his military green schoolbag contains the dream of changing his destiny; she is the daughter of the county cultural librarian, with clear eyes and the fragrance of soap locust in her hair. They stood side by side in front of the blackboard, shared umbrellas in the spring rain, and met their eyes among the bookshelves in the library - every touch made the tips of the young man's ears turn red, and every look at each other made the girl's heart beat faster. This is an extremely subtle youthful throbbing. Lin Mo would look away when the cherry blossoms fell in Su Xiao's hair, and Su Xiao would smell the scent of sunshine and sweat as Lin Mo explained the exercises. They shared the same "Song of Youth", wrote down their unknown thoughts on the edge of the notebook, and agreed to "take the exam to the provincial capital together", but never said that they liked it. Three years of time flowed under the banyan tree. They experienced the confusion of liberal arts and sciences, the test of family changes, and the burden of college entrance examination pressure, and also quietly grew up in hazy emotions. Lin Mo inherited his father's railway soldier's tenacity, and Su Xiao inherited his parents' love for culture. Xiang Fei, Liu Kang, Wang Hong and other young girls each rushed towards their own futures, looking for their own direction in the dawn of reform and opening up. From the classroom to the playground, from the river to the hills, from the youthful first year of high school to the farewell station, they always maintained a beautiful distance of "almost as if they were apart". It wasn't until my classmates reunited many years later, under the banyan tree where they had buried their wishes, that they understood: Some feelings don't need to be possessed, and some good things just need to be sealed. When we first met that year, the spring was bright and beautiful, just suitable for a long and quiet youth.