Written for 17-Year-Old Bai Bai

In the summer when I was seventeen years old, the wind carried the chirping of cicadas into the classroom, and chalk dust floated in the sunshine. I wrote all the love I dared not say into that unsigned letter. The draft paper was crumpled and unfolded, words were changed and deleted, hiding the side faces that peeked during class, the steps of walking together after school, and the most clumsy and passionate thoughts of the young man. I want to wait for a suitable dusk, when the evening breeze is gentle, hand it to you, and tell you the heartbeats that have been hidden for the entire youth. But youth is never just right. There was no time to confess, but there was news of the division into classes, there was no time to say goodbye, there was no time to say goodbye, and there was the turning around of each of them heading for different paths. That letter was eventually tucked into an old textbook. The handwriting slowly turned yellow, and the folds were filled with unspoken regrets. Later, I walked through many summers and saw countless sunsets, but I never encountered such pure heartbeat again. It turns out that the most painful thing about youth is never the grand farewell, but the confession letter that was never sent, which has become an eternal blank in my heart, hiding all the timidity and regrets of my youth, which I will never forget year after year. Those unfinished confessions eventually became the tenderest and most heart-wrenching obsessions in youth.