At seventeen, after a year as desk mates, he pushed thirty-two orange candies to the corner of my desk. Each one came with the same excuse: "I just happened to bring extra." Then heavy snow buried the half of his sentence he never finished, and our classes were split into different tracks, separating our desks and leaving two school buildings between us and an entire youth.
For the next fourteen years, I went to college, looked for work, saw my mother off on her final journey, and married. He got into Tsinghua through a special recommendation, pursued a direct PhD, and became famous. Every greeting we exchanged remained in our drafts.
At thirty-one, we met again in front of the ruins. He placed the candy he'd been too reluctant to give me back then into my palm. "Some things should have been said fourteen years ago."
But by then, we had both set off on our own lives.
This is a story of things being "just right": just right to fall in love, just right to be timid, just right to miss each other, and just right to spend the rest of our lives making up for that unfinished sentence.
