Time and Him, I Came to Understand
The Love Left Unspoken
18
People passing by would cast a curious glance or two at me.
Then slowly turn and walk away.
Maybe they couldn't understand either.
Why on this night after the college entrance exam was over.
A night when everyone else was celebrating.
I was the only one crouching under the bus stop sign in my school uniform.
Crying my eyes out.
After crying for a while, I picked up the diary, stood up, and walked home, still sobbing.
This tree-lined road that I'd walked from elementary school through high school was also silent, as if even the wind didn't want to speak.
Everything was hushed, only the moon wiping away my tears.
When I got home, my dad looked at my disheveled self in surprise. My mom poked her head out of the kitchen, still holding a dishcloth, still wearing her apron.
They didn't ask what had happened.
They just watched me cry as I headed back to my bedroom.
Just like on countless days of breakdown throughout my childhood, they stayed silent, and then placed a cup of warm milk on the table.
I sat in my bedroom, the diary spread open on the desk.
I didn't even have the courage to flip through it again.
I was like a reinforcement general arriving too late, looking over the field of fallen soldiers, helpless.
What to do, and what could be done.
In our senior year, when the teacher reviewed functions, the relationship between Lucas and me was like an asymptote and its curve—we approached each other infinitely, but we seemed to have no intersection, neither of us able to cross that invisible line perpendicular to the x-axis.
19
"July 7, 2020—Sunny—Tuesday"
Today is the college entrance exam.
Next year it'll be our turn.
Are you scared?
"July 10, 2020—Sunny—Friday" I did this year's college entrance exam questions.
My mind went straight to recent events again.
Actually it's quite helpless.
A lot of things I have no right to decide.
It's clearly my life.
But I'm not the one directing it.
"July 13, 2020—Light rain—Monday"
My mom mentioned my preparation for the recommendation exam on the phone.
I was silent for a long time. I didn't know how to bring it up.
My mom seemed to realize something too.
She suddenly said in a stern tone.
"Lucas, you've always known your limits. You should understand what matters most."
I didn't have the right to squander all the effort and expectations my family had poured into me.
My grandparents looking to me to bring honor to the family.
My parents who were always proud of my existence.
The approving sighs from my teachers that landed on my shoulders.
Everyone knew this was the best answer to these dozen-plus years of education.
I knew better than anyone how right this choice was for me.
But I couldn't help thinking.
What about you then.
What about us?
"July 15, 2020—Sunny—Wednesday"
Sometimes I really can't figure it out.
How can a city this small.
Still never bump into you at any corner.
"July 20, 2020—Sunny—Monday" Don't know what to write. Finals are coming up. You'll do fine.
"July 30, 2020—Cloudy—Thursday" Saw your grades. Pretty good. You can enjoy your summer break now.
"August 20, 2020—Sunny—Thursday"
Today was a rare chance to catch my breath from studying.
Chatted with a classmate from another class I knew from middle school.
He said he'd fallen for someone.
He said an old fuddy-duddy like me couldn't understand his feelings.
I said I understood.
He was shocked.
He said I hid it too well.
All he ever saw was me writing with my head down.
Other than that, just walking to the corridor to look out the window.
Even playing ball was at a fixed time.
I didn't explain.
I've always been a coward.
My love is too restrained.
So many times the words rose to my lips and I swallowed them back.
All my feelings lived in my peripheral vision.
The storms raging inside.
I only dared to put on paper.
20
My earbuds were playing "Third Person" by the singer Mai Lajiao Yeyongquan:
From the perspective of a third person.
You also understand, actually.
Everyone has flaws.
Unconsciously covering them up.
More or less.
It's a natural behavior.
...
I only felt dazed, hands clasped together, ceaseless cold drops falling onto the backs of my hands.
A suffocating ache that left me only capable of endlessly flipping through the diary, with no idea what to do next.
"August 24, 2020—Cloudy—Monday"
The school scheduled the start of the new semester for the day before Qixi again.
The summer break for rising seniors felt especially short.
No more flipping through bound workbooks together.
Just sheet after sheet of exam papers.
If you missed even one day, your desk would be completely buried under test papers.
"August 25, 2020—Light rain—Tuesday"
From today we're officially seniors.
When I signed my name on the workbook, I accidentally wrote "Class One, Sophomore Year" again.
Only after finishing did I realize I was already a senior.
They say high school flies by.
I never took it seriously before I started high school.
The tedious middle school material made me feel miserable.
I never imagined high school would be any different.
Maybe it was because of you.
Time flew by so fast.
For the first time, I felt reluctance.
"August 28, 2020—Light rain—Friday"
Blanket Girl.
Today is my seventeenth birthday.
I made a wish.
They say if you tell a wish, it won't come true.
I want my wish to come true.
So I won't write it down.
"September 1, 2020—Sunny—Tuesday"
I arrived at the classroom a bit early this morning.
But I saw that in the dark classroom building, on the fourth floor.
Only your classroom's light was on.
I was puzzled.
Then I saw you holding a water bottle in one hand and a book in the other.
Seeming to be memorizing material.
Out of twenty-four classes in the entire building.
Only the classroom behind me and the one behind you had their lights on.
In summer, the sky was already growing light.
Everything was silent.
Between heaven and earth.
It was as if only the two of us remained.
"September 7, 2020—Sunny—Monday"
Theo asked me why I kept coming so early lately.
He said I was despicable.
He said someone like me had no right to study hard in the morning.
I couldn't be bothered with him.
This blockhead doesn't understand math.
And he doesn't understand my feelings either.
"September 8, 2020—Light rain—Tuesday"
The classroom building was pitch dark.
You'd be scared going to school so early by yourself.
So I went a little earlier than you.
Turned on the lights in the corridor and stairwell in advance.
So you'd feel safer.
And you don't even watch where you're walking.
What if you tripped at a time like this?
"September 10, 2020—Cloudy—Thursday"
I'd just turned on the lights and was heading back downstairs.
And bumped into you coming up.
You had heavy dark circles under your eyes.
You didn't even look up after bumping into me.
Just held the handrail and slowly made your way up.
Have you been very tired lately?
I stood there for a long time.
Through the winding gaps between the stairs.
Watching you grow further and further away.
I looked at the diary, and those early-morning, late-night days came flooding back to my mind.
Senior year was actually really hard for me.
In the second semester of sophomore year, I suddenly realized something.
Compared to others, I seemed to have no fallback.
I was born in a third- or fourth-tier small city. My parents were very ordinary people. Every day, my dad earned a meager salary at an insurance company.
Bowing and scraping before his boss, getting harangued by unreasonable managers.
My mom, to take care of me, had been a housewife for most of her life. Every day she fretted over vegetables that had gone up a few cents.
Neither of them had gone to college. They'd suffered so much and taken so many detours because of their education that they vowed that even if they had to sell everything they owned, they'd make sure I got through school.
When I was in elementary school, a boy in my class pointed at my nose and said my dad drove a beat-up Jetta worth only a few tens of thousands of yuan.
I cried on the spot from anger. I didn't know what to say.
I didn't know how much the car my dad had scraped and saved to buy was actually worth.
I only knew that that old Jetta accompanied my entire educational journey, carving out a path to a new life for me, rain or shine.
I'd always loved reading since I was little. It was trendy to subscribe to the magazine "Youth Monthly" back then—many kids in my class subscribed, and I wanted to read it too, so I told my mom.
I remember my mom was still in the tiny kitchen, steam rising from the rice pot. She listened to what I said and without another word called the teacher to subscribe it for me.
It was only later that I learned that period was the hardest time for our family. They'd just bought the house and had almost no money left.
Years later my mom told me she used to spend money in five-yuan increments, setting a daily limit of how many fives she could spend.
Some kids' parents are wealthy and powerful—they can easily create a beautiful future for their children.
My parents had nothing, yet they gave me priceless love. They couldn't offer me a shortcut to the top, but they held me up on their shoulders so I could see this colorful world.
For me, Mom and Dad endured year after year in the deep water and scorching fire of those days.