Afterword
The Love Left Unspoken
I've finally reached the afterword.
I've been looking forward to this day for a long time.
I've lost count of how many nights I stayed up late writing.
In June 2022, right after the college entrance exams ended, I was scrolling through the news when a wave of nostalgia for my own high school days hit me.
By coincidence, the taxi I was in drove past our old high school. Groups of underclassmen in school uniforms streamed out of the gates—just as green as I once was.
So I pulled out my phone.
Opened Zhihu.
"What novels make you cry from sweetness?"
Honestly, at first I didn't even register the word "cry." I was convinced I was writing something sweet.
I didn't overthink it. I just started typing.
"After the college entrance exams..."
And that's how Lucas and Bea's story came into the world. To my surprise, it turned out that many students had experienced something similar. Almost overnight, I received an outpouring of comments, likes, bookmarks, and private messages.
That was when I realized—ah, so everyone's high school experience was actually a lot alike.
I marveled at this while frantically churning out chapters.
I finished the whole thing in about a week.
From first draft to final column publication came to about seventeen thousand words.
Not a lot, really, but I was genuinely busy during that stretch, writing whenever I could steal a moment.
I typed the entire thing on my phone, propped up in bed at one or two in the morning, music playing through my headphones, scenes from my own high school looping endlessly in my mind as I clawed through memories I'd tucked into corners.
After those seventeen thousand words, I slept like the dead.
Later, as more readers discovered the story, "Blanket Girl" became known to more and more people.
I received many private messages. I even came across Douyin videos recommending my novel.
And then, on a perfectly ordinary day, something extraordinary happened.
Reach a hundred thousand words, and Blanket Girl could be published.
I'm the kind of writer who doesn't outline.
I write and post as I go.
Even I don't know what's going to happen in the next chapter.
I just follow wherever the story leads.
I often feel that—
Once you've given characters their own personalities and emotions, the story isn't under the author's control anymore. They start making their own decisions.
For me, the writing itself came relatively easily.
But I'd underestimated what a hundred thousand words actually meant.
Expanding a storyline that was already complete, with a finished ending, into a hundred-thousand-word manuscript—was far, far harder than I'd imagined.
I wrote and deleted, deleted and wrote. I'd wake up in the middle of the night feeling like something was off and delete it all over again.
After painfully grinding out thirty thousand words, I looked at the word count and just about broke down.
In that situation, I had to extend beyond the original ending—which meant I'd need to write about their college years.
I tried.
I found I couldn't do it.
Because the original purpose of this story was simply to memorialize high school, not to glorify some epic romance.
I showed the new material to a friend. She said it felt different—adding the college arc created a sense of dissonance.
It was, in the simplest terms, not as good anymore.
That night, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
It hit me suddenly: people love Lucas not just because of Lucas, but because of the high school we can never return to and the youth we only get to live once.
What they love is—themselves, that ordinary self.
I had an epiphany.
And that's how Theo, Ryan, Qian Duolai, Lin Jingjing, and Zhuo Ting came to be.
I took the details buried in Lucas's diary and spun them into new stories.
Different people express love in different ways.
And this motley collection of different individuals, each carrying their own heart, came together to form this grand tapestry of youth.
And so the story of Sycamore City High—
Arrived before you.
Now, about the ending.
The story's true ending is simply the moment Bea makes that phone call.
When I first wrote this ending, I didn't know what to give them. Honestly, I'd originally intended to let them miss each other. I felt there was a genuine three-year time gap between them, plus some gaps that weren't merely distances. From an objective, rational standpoint—
The odds of them actually ending up together weren't high.
Speaking of the male lead's personality—Lucas quietly loved Bea for three years without ever making a move, loving her in total silence.
While writing him, I hit a confusion partway through.
Which was—is there really someone like Lucas in this world? Someone who could love someone silently, steadfastly, for three years?
I posted this question as a social media update and received many responses from friends.
Most of the girls didn't believe it. They figured if he really liked her that much, he wouldn't have stayed silent for three years without letting her know.
Fair enough—because I'd never heard of a guy like that existing in real life either.
The guys, on the other hand, answered completely differently. They all said yes, absolutely—some people are exactly like that, and some are even more extreme than Lucas. They'd rather miss out than reveal their feelings.
I thought about it and concluded neither side is entirely wrong.
Every person in this world is different. Everyone chooses their own way of loving.
You have to allow that some people love quietly and inwardly.
Back to the ending.
I remember when I was close to writing the ending—
I forget whether it was in a comment or a private message—
But a girl said something that left a deep impression on me.
She said her own youth had already had enough regrets, so she hoped that in another world, Lucas and Bea could be together.
It was like a bolt of lightning—everything clicked into place.
If you recall, in Lucas's diary—
There's a mention of a literary device called "xuanxiang."
The diary puts it this way:
"I miss you, but I won't say I miss you. I'll say you miss me."
Strictly speaking, this technique is called "duixie"—writing from the other's perspective.
But I insisted on using the term "xuanxiang" in the diary.
Because those words were something I wrote down during my own high school years.
Back then, in literature class, while the teacher was lecturing about classical poetry, I was staring out at the busy street outside and that line came to me.
At the time, I felt it was a kind of xuanxiang—projective imagination.
So in the story, Lucas is an ordinary high schooler of the same age I was then, casually keeping a diary. I think the misunderstanding is harmless—a charming little error born of adolescence, of not quite grasping the lesson in class.
But if you apply Lucas's logic to his entire diary and the ending that follows—
The ending is, in a way, everyone's xuanxiang.
Because in your own real life, you haven't gotten a happy ending—so you write yourself one.
That is: I've been secretly in love with you for three years.
But I insist on writing: You were secretly in love with me for three years.
I wonder if that makes sense to you all.
I'll leave it at that. Let's return to the ending.
On the foundation of the original story—
I didn't change the ending that had already been set.
Instead, I wrote in a more suggestive way that this story has a happy ending. In Zhuo Ting's extra chapter, Lucas gets married—to the girl he's loved since high school.
Reading this far, I think everyone understands.
In the end, Lucas and Bea did end up together.
Because so many readers were passionate about what happened next for the two of them, after all the character extras, I added a little bonus scene—a happy period at the end of the sentence.
As for those of you who feel they couldn't possibly end up together—let the ending stop at that phone call. Whether they find each other again is something you'll have to judge for yourselves.
That covers the story within the book.
Now let me tell you a story of my own.
When I was in high school, I liked a senior.
To be honest, he wasn't as outstanding as Lucas.
He wasn't tall—fair and thin—but he had a lovely voice.
We were barely acquaintances. Just nodding familiarity, really.
Sometimes when I ran into him, I'd even dodge away, skittish and careful.
When I liked him most, I threw myself into writing—scribbling heaps of nonsense every day.
When you like someone, they always seem to glow, and you feel dull in comparison. Insecurity is inevitable.
I'd vacillate—sometimes telling myself I wasn't good enough, sometimes deciding I wasn't that bad after all. In the bustle of those days, the only time I dared steal was a few minutes hiding by our class balcony, gazing blankly at his building across the way.
I remember once during inspection week, I crossed two buildings, climbed to his floor, and strolled past his classroom as if by chance—just to peek at him through the back door for one second before disappearing.
At the sports meet, I was a fill-in runner. While waiting at the staging area, I saw him. We exchanged a greeting, then each went our separate way toward our own events.
Halfway through my race, I heard someone shout, "Go!"
The voice sounded like his.
But by the time I reached the finish line—wrecked, out of breath—I had no strength left to turn around and see who it was.
To this day, I still don't know for certain whether that voice was his.
Scanning the cafeteria for his silhouette. Searching for him in the flag-raising formations over and over. Hoping to bump into him after finishing my performance. These things—I think everyone does them. No need for me to elaborate.
Everyone in the world who's ever had a crush is the same.
It's just that the endings go differently.
Unlike Lucas and Bea's ending—
We didn't have a period at the close of our sentence.
Every year, the graduating seniors would sell their used books at a discount to the younger students before they left.
On his last afternoon, the sun had just dipped below the horizon, the sky layered with clouds of sunset color. There were five or six minutes left before evening self-study began.
I was sitting at my desk when a classmate handed me a stack of books. On top was a postcard, beneath that a map, and then some study materials.
I asked who gave them to me.
The classmate said they didn't know—just that a senior had asked him to deliver them.
Then the senior had hurried off.
I ran to the balcony, but only caught a glimpse of his back.
I picked up the postcard. No signature. No special message.
Just a very ordinary line of encouragement.
Nothing more.
That was the last time I saw him.
A silhouette. That's all.
The last I heard of him was on the graduate departure list.
In a grade of over a thousand people, I searched through the chaos of names, trying to find the faintest trace he'd left behind.
He hadn't done particularly well on the exams. I stood before the board with his name on it, staring for a long time.
That was the entirety of our story.
I don't have any regrets. Long afterward, I came to realize that what I felt was its own kind of adolescent flutter—a hazy, dreamlike fondness.
That fondness pushed me to grow and nudged me toward becoming a better version of myself.
That, I think, was his meaning in my life.
Not every story needs to end with a period. The branches I pruned away—imperfect as they were—formed their own bittersweet aesthetic of youth, all mine.
There's still so much more I want to say. It feels like words fall short.
Beyond my gratitude for the family, friends, and patient editors who accompanied me throughout—
The most important thanks goes to you, the readers who have supported me all along.
Without you, there might be no Lucas and no Bea either.
I thought long and hard about what line should close this entire book.
In the end, I thought of Xi Murong's poem "Youth."
I'll let this poem serve as the final word.
Everything I want to say is contained within it.
Youth—
All endings have been written.
All tears have been set upon their way.
And yet I suddenly forget how it all began.
In that ancient summer that will never return.
No matter how I search.
Your young form passes like a cloud's shadow.
And your smiling face is so faint, so pale.
Slowly fading behind the mountains after sunset.
So I turn to those yellowed pages.
Fate has bound it so clumsily.
Through tears I read it again and again.
Yet I must admit—
Youth is a book far too hastily written.