When Yu'an Meets You

When the senior class was reshuffled, Ren Yu'an and Cheng Yu became desk mates, one behind the other. She excelled at English but was average at math; he shone in science but barely passed English. The study group their homeroom teacher put together made them regular partners. They went from explaining problems to each other and borrowing notes, to picking up breakfast for one another on the way in, then walking side by side from the classroom building to the school gate after evening study, chatting about the ups and downs of mock exams and complaining about the cafeteria food. They were ordinary high school seniors, anxious about rankings, nodding off in class, writing words no one else knew on their scratch paper, and falling silent as the countdown to the gaokao ticked on. Young people keep their feelings deeply buried. Neither of them was the first to say they liked the other. Only after the gaokao was over and the results came out did they realize that the person they most wanted to share the news with had always been each other. Later, they enrolled at two universities in the same city. College was free and wide open, but it was also easy to drift apart. They saw each other fumble through their first days on campus and helped each other endure the combined pressures of clubs and coursework. They never made a point of staying in touch, but they never lost touch either. From a weekly video call to meeting up on weekends after taking the subway across town; from a tentative “I think I kind of miss you” to a certain “Then come over.”