Lanjiang Is Silent

The water of Lanjiang River has been flowing for six years, from the chirping of cicadas in the early autumn of the sixth grade to the evening breeze in the late spring of the third grade of high school. On the day when he transferred to Tongshan Middle School in sixth grade, Su Wanqiao in a white skirt appeared in Li Mo's world. In the third year of junior high school, he stuffed all his unspoken thoughts into a gray pen cover that had fallen off, sandwiched it between wrinkled orange candy wrappers, and wrote it next to the English prepositions that he had erased and changed. He had seen the dried osmanthus petals on her hair and the soft fluff on the collar of her pink cotton-padded jacket, but he never dared to step forward and say a superfluous "hello". The summer after the high school entrance examination was so boring that the two paths that had run parallel for three years suddenly separated: she went to Lanjiang Middle School, and he entered Lanjiang Vocational High School. Since then, we have never met or had any contact with him. During his three years of high school, he endured one cold winter after another alone by the Lanjiang River. Occasionally, he thought of the figure with a ponytail swinging from his back, but he just clenched the old pen in his pocket and did not dare to ask more about her. For six years, Lanjiang remained silent. He hid his entire youth in the wind that did not dare to blow towards her. It was not until the evening of his senior year of high school that he dared to face the surging river and gently utter the unspoken "goodbye" that he had saved for six years.