Years ago, I wrote a diary entry with the same line in mind.

At the end of that old piece, I had written something like this: another year was about to begin, and the dreams I once had, the people I once loved, the poems I once wrote had all become the deepest marks in memory. As I kept running forward, they seemed to grow dimmer and more distant. What frightened me most was the thought that the unknown road ahead might never hold anything like them again.

Now the circumstances are different. This is my fifth year since officially starting work. I have what looks, at least on the surface, like a known job and a known future.

On the final morning of a training program, just as I got up to wash up, I received a call from the school office asking whether I would be willing to go teach at a branch campus in a township school support post. I said no, at least for now, because I had no such plan.

During the training, one teacher called me outside and told me the branch campus director had asked her to persuade me. While we were talking, the director came over too. I said I wanted to stay with my current class until they graduated. The director assumed I meant I wanted to teach a graduating class, so he immediately offered to arrange that for me. But the teacher who was there to talk me into it understood what I really meant. She turned to him and said, “He means he can’t bear to leave the students he has now.” Then she turned back to me and added, “Don’t worry about that too much. Once you’ve worked longer, you won’t feel it so strongly.”

Normally, going to a township middle school for this kind of teaching assignment requires teachers to apply in advance. The spots are limited, and the school ranks candidates by points, so in many people’s eyes this was an unusually good opportunity for me. The branch campus was short one Chinese teacher, and among the younger Chinese teachers at our school who had no township school experience, there were only two of us. The other teacher is already married and declined, which is why the school reached out to me directly this time.

The branch campus director said that sending someone there now would be helping everyone out of a difficult situation: helping the school, and helping the local township as well. The teacher trying to convince me even quoted, half-jokingly, a line from The Memorial on Sending Out the Troops: “to accept a command in a time of crisis.”

After that, I kept wavering. I truly felt I had done a decent job with this group of students, and it seemed a pity to leave halfway through. Besides, I had gotten to know some genuinely interesting kids. The support assignment at the branch campus would last two years. Even though the commute is only about twenty minutes, the thought of going back and forth nearly every day for two full years still felt unbearably long. And on top of that, I had no desire at all to enter a new environment and start dealing with new people. Not going would have been the happiest option for me.

And yet I couldn’t forget what the director said in the end. At this moment, I really did seem like the most suitable person to step in. On one hand, I myself need township school work experience. On the other, young people are easier to arrange. If I refused, it would seem selfish, and who knows what kind of obstacles that might create later in my work.

More colleagues came to persuade me after that. Some of them would add, almost as a formality at the end, “Of course, it still depends on what you want.” But little by little, I seemed to accept as a given that I was already going.

At noon, I called my father. I didn’t frame it as asking for advice. I reported it to him.

I knew that once I became an adult—and especially once I had to face society on my own—there were many things he would neither decide for me nor really be able to advise me on.

From that afternoon into the evening, and all the way until two in the morning, I remained sad about the decision I had made, but also strangely unable to say much about it. I told Xiao Ai how I felt. It responded with a couple of polished, comforting lines that sounded literary and vaguely like motivational slogans, and then played The Brightest Star in the Night Sky.

That song used to be on repeat for me one summer many years ago. Back then, summer did not require air conditioning. There was no sorrow, no anxiety, and every day seemed to end with beautiful evening clouds.

Only after growing up, especially after having to face society alone, do you realize how many things are never truly ours to choose.

The real reason I finally decided to go is not so different from what moved me years ago, though even at the moment of deciding I was not especially firm.

I know that not many students will remember me for long. Even if I stayed with them for the full three years, once they graduate they will meet new classmates and new teachers, while we will welcome another group of teenagers. For them, striding forward, this is simply part of growing up. For someone like me, who may spend nearly a lifetime trapped inside this steel-walled city, it feels especially cruel.

So I told myself that if separation is inevitable, then perhaps earlier or later makes no real difference. Better not think too much about them.

But today I am not happy at all. Even deep in the night, their faces and voices keep returning to me. They are people who, just by existing, seem to carry something bright and beautiful. And I may not even get the chance to say goodbye properly.

The happiness we once shared already feels like a drifting dream. Memory itself begins to seem unreal.

In dreams, one does not know he is only a passing guest, and steals a moment of joy.

That is where my thoughts are now—just as tangled as these words. Like a child who never quite grows up, I still have no graceful way to face parting and loss.