On autumn evenings in the north, I always find myself thinking of those days filled with exam papers and chalk dust. Back then, the old locust tree outside the classroom window swayed in the wind, its sparse shadows shifting. Sunlight filtered through the glass and fell in mottled patches across our open textbooks, like some silent code on the verge of vanishing. The air was always thick with a complicated mix of smells: the bitterness of ink, the plastic scent of cheap ballpoint pens, the rust of the heating pipes in winter, and the fresh, clean scent unique to teenagers, mingled with sweat and soap. That scent became the backdrop to my entire youth. Years later, whenever I look back, it is the first thing I recall, the one keepsake I have of that time.
It was a story about waiting and making sacrifices for someone else, a love that bloomed quietly and was just as quietly sealed away beneath the looming shadow of the college entrance exams, all in the name of "what's best for you." Looking back now, it was less like a passionate romance and more like an unfinished prose poem, a line of verse deliberately left blank. It was about a girl's patience and intelligence, and a boy's growth and awakening. In the end, it did not reach the "happy ending" defined by society, but it left an image on the negative of my life that will never fade.
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