When the Leaf Veins Are Intact

"Growth is not about becoming perfect, but about learning to reconcile with your imperfect selves." Lin Zhixia wrote an essay about "home" and won first prize in the city, but she felt "stripped naked" in the sympathetic eyes of the class. From then on, she only wrote about "safe" things - landscapes, objects, other people's stories, hiding herself behind gorgeous rhetoric. It wasn't until the autumn of her second year of high school, when the seventh sycamore leaf fell, that she met the transfer student Jiang Yubai. He said: "The veins of this leaf are intact." He said: "Sometimes, it falls not because it withers, but because the time has come." Two people who are afraid of being "seen" are arranged by Teacher Zhou as script partners for the campus literature festival. From "trembling separately" to "trembling together", from "pretending to be stone" to "acknowledging vulnerability", they touched each other in the words and searched for the possibility of "after" in the trauma of "before". The third leaf, Su Xiaotang, her best friend who had hurt her due to "unauthorized submission", was also a little further away, waiting for an opportunity to get closer. This is not a fairy tale about "healing", but a true record about "continuing": fear itself is not the enemy, the enemy is "because you are afraid, you never move."