This Time, I Won't Ask When You'll Return

“Gu Yan, just how many things are you still hiding from me?”

It was his third year teaching in a rural school, and I never got the chance to ask him that to his face.

After the earthquake, I received his belongings: an empty tin box, an unfinished letter, and a phone. Its drafts folder held 43 messages he had never sent.

The last one ended: “Xiaoxiao, there was another aftershock today. How are things on your end, ”

He never finished it.

I searched through everything he left behind, and only then pieced together a Gu Yan I didn't recognize at all.

The things he kept from me for three years will take me a lifetime to come to terms with...