1

At graduation, he suddenly leaned close to her ear and said softly, “I like you.”

She laughed. “Hey, you’ve been teasing me for three years. Isn’t that enough?”

For three whole years, she had hidden her feelings while enduring the endless flirting of the person she secretly loved. She was tired.

“I mean it,” he said again, seeing that she didn’t believe him, this time with unusual seriousness.

She looked at him. “When have you ever not said you meant it?”

He lowered his head. “The truth is, I meant it every single time.”

2

She liked him for four years.

She collected every little thing connected to him, loved the way he looked with his head bent down, felt jealous whenever she saw him with other girls, and wrote countless love letters she never sent.

He knew none of it.

Years later, they were living in different cities, long removed from those days. Yet just before her wedding, she received a gift from him: a single earring she had accidentally lost back then.

Inside was a note:

I spent my youth on a secret love, and still could not end up with you.

3

She fell for the librarian at her school.

Just to see him, she went to the library every day. She buried herself in stacks of books, but her eyes were always drifting toward him at the desk by the door. She borrowed several books each time, only for the chance to see him smile at her.

From freshman year to junior year, she kept going.

At last, she found the courage to confess.

What she had never noticed was that every librarian only held the position for one year.

Only he had stayed for three.

4

Before going home, she always called her father to ask, “Do you need anything?”

He always answered the same way: “No need. Why waste your money?”

So every time, she went back empty-handed.

Once, while on a business trip, she remembered that he liked to drink, and casually bought a bottle to bring home.

A year later, she ran into an older woman from the neighborhood in the provincial capital. The woman smiled and said, “That bottle you bought your dad? He made it last a whole year. Every time someone came by, he’d show it off and praise you.”

Her eyes filled at once.

5

They met in their first year of college, but never spoke a word to each other.

Every time, they ran into one another at the same corner of the corridor, a place he passed by often. For four years, they met there almost every day, exchanged a smile, and walked past each other.

She thought perhaps it was better not to disturb the stillness of that silent crush.

On the night of graduation, she received a text from him:

“For four years, we’ve quietly passed each other by. This time, I want to hold your hand.”

6

At fifteen, she wrote to tell him she had fought with her parents. He wrote back to comfort her.

At eighteen, she wrote to say she had been accepted. He wrote back with praise.

At twenty-one, she wrote to say her heart had been broken. He wrote back to encourage her.

At twenty-four, she wrote that she was getting married. He replied with his blessing.

At twenty-seven, she wrote to say she had become a mother. He congratulated her.

At thirty, she wrote that the father she had always resented had died.

He never wrote back again.

7

Old lovers met again like old friends, talking and laughing with ease.

He picked up her phone and idly flipped through it, then froze. “You still kept those texts from years ago?”

She snatched the phone back. “You dumped me without a second thought. Can’t I keep your sweet talk around to mock you later?”

After the meal, he left first.

She quietly opened the old messages one by one and read them carefully.

Then she murmured to herself, “I just need some proof. Proof that even if we ended up apart, there was once a time you really loved me that much.”

8

He said he loved me very much.

And yet every time we went out to eat, he made me wait half an hour before showing up. We always went to the same restaurant. Eventually I could not bear the waiting anymore, so I asked to break up.

He lowered his head and said, “I’m sorry for making you wait so long every time...”

One day, I went back to that restaurant and noticed the food tasted different.

I asked the owner why.

The owner said, “There used to be a man who loved coming here to cook for his girlfriend himself...”

9

After his wife died, she married him.

When his son was ten, she entered that household carrying the name of “the other woman.” The rebellious child tormented her for years.

By forty-five, she had worked herself into illness.

As she lay dying, she looked at the child’s cold back and said, “Could you call me Mom just once?”

He gave her nothing but contempt. “You’re just a shameless woman.”

Through tears, barely able to speak, she said, “Back then, your... your mother was the other woman. She... she took away my son before he was even a year old.”

10

The year she failed the college entrance exam, she was crushed, and the whole house seemed heavy with silence.

One afternoon, she fell asleep in a rocking chair in the courtyard. In her half-dream, she felt herself drifting along with a lullaby, light and peaceful in a way she had not felt for a long time.

Her mother whispered, “She smiled, she smiled. When she was little, she would smile at the sound of a lullaby even in her sleep. I didn’t expect she’d still do that now...”

Another voice answered, “Keep your voice down. This child hasn’t smiled in days. Don’t stop.”

Just waking, she kept her eyes closed, tears slipping out as she continued to smile.

Eighteen years had passed.

She had forgotten.