The transfer, in the end, was placed on the agenda. Her grandfather said he had finally managed to pull some strings. Jiang Du said nothing — her silence was as good as acceptance.

Sitting alone, staring blankly at the sofa, it was as if the sound of rain still lingered in her ears, that figure still seated there, a small indentation left behind after rising, the lightning and thunder, the osmanthus tree with its leaves turning and rolling in the wind.

“I took the bus myself today — all told, including waiting, one hour.” Her grandfather spoke with robust energy. He was thorough; he had calculated the time for Jiang Du in advance. Her grandmother nodded along. “County Third Middle School is also one of the top schools in that area. Little one, let Grandfather pick you up on weekends first. Once we’ve found a good place to rent and moved over, you won’t have to commute back and forth anymore.”

The two old people spoke, one sentence each, the wrinkles on their faces carved like knife marks. Jiang Du looked at the white hair at their temples and suddenly felt as though she had committed grievous sins.

Close on the heels of that feeling, a strong and vivid thought formed in her mind: she was leaving.

She would never see Wei Qingyue again.

Life was still very long — but for her, if only time could stop at those moments when she could write letters to him, and never move forward again.

Late at night, in the deep quiet, she found her grandfather’s lighter and took out the three letters she’d written after the fact but never sent to Wei Qingyue. Outside the window there was sometimes moonlight, sometimes starlight — fleeting flashes of beauty. She had many books — all kinds — and the letters were tucked inside an old one. There was no need to worry about anyone prying. Her grandparents had always respected her very much; even to enter her room, they knocked first.

For Grandfather and Grandmother’s sake, I must be strong and study well. Jiang Du wept great silent tears, soundless. She stroked those letters, then kissed them. All the loneliness of her youth had been written into these letters that had never been received by anyone.

The summer night carried the scent of lush, dense-growing grass, one wave after another drifting in through the window. A proverb floated into Jiang Du’s mind: peaches in three years, apricots in four, plums in five; but for ginkgo fruit, you wait three generations. She and Wei Qingyue — let them be like peaches, apricots, and plums, three years, four years, five years. Whatever they did, they must not become ginkgo trees.

May we meet again, may we meet again, may we meet again.

These were the only words recorded in her diary for June 2007. Jiang Du had never written of grief or despair. Of the things that had happened to her that summer, not a single word.

The room was filled with the smell of burning paper. She opened the window and let the smell drift away on the wind.

The next day, Jiang Du lay in bed unable to get up. She had a fever. A summer cold was always more miserable than a winter one.

Her head was dizzy, her whole body drained. After taking cold medicine, she wanted only to sleep. On Monday, Jiang Du insisted on going to school herself to collect her things. Her grandfather wouldn’t allow it. She burst into tears, saying she was capable of it.

If she couldn’t say a proper goodbye, that would be too much to bear. She wanted to see Wei Qingyue one last time, and she wanted to take a good, long look at Mei Middle School — the tree near the library would be lonely without her.

But she looked truly frail — pale-faced and listless. Her grandfather said to rest one more day at home before going to school.

On Tuesday, he personally accompanied her to school.

Knowing she was transferring and that her belongings in the dormitory needed collecting, Li Suhua hurried over to help.

When Jiang Du entered the classroom, everyone inside looked up at her. She imagined the homeroom teacher had already told the class about her transfer. Sure enough — written on the blackboard in large characters were the words: “Wishing classmate Jiang Du a soaring future and smooth sailing.”

“You’re really transferring?” Zhu Yulong, unusually, took the initiative to speak to her. Jiang Du’s body was unwell, her voice weak: “Yes, it’s all been arranged.”

“Then—” Zhu Yulong hesitated, then extended her hand, meaning to shake Jiang Du’s. Jiang Du extended hers in return. “I wish you all the best.”

“You too.” Jiang Du clasped her hand slightly tighter, her breathing quickening. “Zhu Yulong, could you go check for me whether Wei Qingyue of Science Class One is in his classroom right now?”

Zhu Yulong’s expression showed surprise. She asked: “You don’t know about what happened yesterday?”

Then she remembered that yesterday, Monday, Jiang Du had taken a sick day.

“What happened yesterday?” Jiang Du’s voice was muffled.

Zhu Yulong wasn’t sure whether she should say it. She thought for a moment, then said: “I assumed you knew. We all assumed you wouldn’t be transferring after all. Yesterday — Wei Qingyue got into a fight with that man at the gate and was seriously hurt. I don’t know exactly how it started, but I heard from classmates that Wei Qingyue has a ruptured spleen and three broken ribs.”

Jiang Du froze.

A sharp, searing pain tore through her body in an instant. The girl’s breath seemed to catch — she didn’t know where the next one would come from.

Before her emotions could be processed, the class monitor came in to tell her that a girl from Science Class One was looking for her. Jiang Du ran out. She had a little cough, and as soon as she saw Zhang Xiaoqiang, she couldn’t stop coughing — as if determined to cough up her very organs.

Zhang Xiaoqiang held her steady and walked her down the stairs, then unscrewed her water bottle and offered it to Jiang Du for a drink of warm water.

“I have a cold.” Jiang Du pushed the water bottle away, but Zhang Xiaoqiang said: “It’s all right — you’re coughing so badly, drink a little water.”

Jiang Du shook her head. She coughed until tears streamed down her face, impossible to wipe away fast enough.

The two sat down in a shaded spot behind the administrative building. Jiang Du’s color was terrible, and in the end she didn’t take a single sip of water. She couldn’t ruin Zhang Xiaoqiang’s insulated bottle — she had filled it with hot water, probably because she was in the middle of her period, and an insulated bottle like that cost tens of yuan…

“Wei Qingyue’s locker key — he gave it to me first thing yesterday morning. He said he originally planned to bring it to you himself, but when he heard you’d taken the day off, he gave the key to me instead.” Zhang Xiaoqiang pulled a key from her pocket. The keychain was a little yellow bird — identical to hers.

A yellow Tweety Bird, forever funny and adorable.

Looking at the Tweety Bird, Jiang Du wept.

Zhang Xiaoqiang rarely cried. As far as she could remember, she had never cried over anything. What reason did she have to cry? Good grades, a comfortable family, a set of very devoted parents, and teachers who were fond of her, classmates who admired her — she had sailed smoothly through life, and truly could find no reason to cry.

Yet in this moment she desperately wanted to, for no clear reason — as if something sorrowful had reached out and seized her, something in life that makes a person feel grief.

“Jiang Du, why do you have to transfer?” She had seen the large writing on the humanities class blackboard. Zhang Xiaoqiang felt terribly sad — so terribly sad that she thought the saddest moment of her life must surely be right now. “If you leave like this, what does that make Wei Qingyue? He deliberately provoked your father — no, that awful man. That man nearly beat him to death. Wei Qingyue was curled on the ground covering his head, just letting himself be beaten. Many of us saw it. The teachers said Wei Qingyue might not be able to keep his spleen — it may need to be removed. He had many broken bones. We all thought he’d been beaten to death. Everyone cried. He’s about to go abroad, yet he still did this for you. Others might not know, but I know — he wanted that man put in prison so that you could, so that you could stay at Mei Middle School and keep studying.”

Zhang Xiaoqiang was sobbing too hard to continue. She covered her face, shoulders shuddering in waves.

I’ve done all I can. I don’t know how… to do any more. These were the last words Wei Qingyue had spoken through a mouthful of blood before losing consciousness. So many people had surrounded him — the sound of classmates crying, the shouts of teachers, all entwined together. Zhang Xiaoqiang had been jostled from every side, fighting her way forward to see Wei Qingyue. She had heard people say he’d spoken these words. She didn’t know what they meant.

But she knew.

Over the weekend, Wei Qingyue had left her a message on the messaging platform. By the time she saw it, it seemed he had already gone offline — his avatar was gray, and never lit up again. She couldn’t tell if he was deliberately invisible or genuinely hadn’t logged on.

He had said:

My departure abroad is imminent, and the only thing weighing on my mind is Jiang Du. You and I have been classmates for years — there are certain things I need not conceal from you, and perhaps you have already sensed something. I need say no more. After I leave, I entrust you, when you have leisure, to chat with Jiang Du and keep her company, and if she encounters any difficulty, to offer a helping hand, so that she does not feel too alone. Once I arrive in America, I will send you my address and contact information. Please keep in touch. The above, for now, only you shall know. Tell no one else. My sincere thanks.

The message was composed and measured — the mature side of that young man fully evident. When Zhang Xiaoqiang received it, she was astonished, and felt as though she’d swallowed a lemon. But in the end, she replied with considerable grace:

Old classmate, thank you for your trust in me. I will not let your request down. I hope you continue your top-student ways in America.

To keep the atmosphere from seeming too sorrowful, Zhang Xiaoqiang had deliberately added a smiling emoji. But Wei Qingyue never replied.

Until the incident the next day.

The summer wind was like an endless hot broom, long and sweeping, scorching the faces of youth. Jiang Du’s mind buzzed. For one instant, the world lost all color — only black and white remained: the black was Wei Qingyue’s blood flowing out of him; the white was the sunlight blazing overhead. The contrast was absolute.

So it turned out that the hole in one’s heart could sound like a broken bellows — wheezing and hollow. Loving a person could hurt this much.

She could make no sound. She simply wept without end — wept with all her body and soul. The tears themselves were painful, so that afterward her eyes were swollen and gritty. When she stood up, her vision went dark and she nearly fainted.

Inside the locker were a stack of Shucheng magazines, bound by date, and an MP3 player.

Later, Jiang Du learned that the MP3 contained only two songs — one called “Half a Heart,” one called “Rainy Night.” Both were in Wei Qingyue’s voice. At the end of “Rainy Night,” there was a casually self-assured, rhetorical remark from the young man:

Am I not better than your male classmates at singing?

Better, so much better — you are the best in the whole world. When Jiang Du heard that “Rainy Night,” tears fell like rain again.

The fine rain of autumn, the bitter chill of winter wind, the glittering patterns of a private room… there was someone who had said to her: you can write to me.

In June of 2007, before summer vacation began, Wei Qingyue never came back to school. No one could reach him — not even Zhang Xiaoqiang. All his communication devices had been confiscated. Cut off from the internet, he was confined to the hospital to recover. Wei Zhendong’s pride had suffered an enormous blow. In the end, Wang Yong was thrown behind bars — but that was all a matter for later.

By the end of July, sufficiently recovered, Wei Qingyue was put on a plane by Wei Zhendong. The clouds were like a sea. He flew up to tens of thousands of meters, and slowly, everything of his homeland receded from him — the trees, the sea of people, the high-rises, and the secrets.

Some things are destined to be understood only in hindsight, and to be regretted endlessly for that. Wei Qingyue did not know that that seemingly ordinary Friday evening would be the last time he ever saw Jiang Du.

So many things had happened between them — unremarkable ones, bone-deep ones — unfolding across the most ordinary of days. But he firmly believed he would return to this land, and would once again meet the girl he had known in his youth. For now, the only things he could hold in his hands were the letters he kept looking down to reread. Not in Jiang Du’s handwriting — yet he knew they still belonged to her, even if some things had never been spoken aloud:

Ghost Writer classmate — you are the one who has been writing to me, aren’t you? I have always been quietly waiting, looking forward to your letters. Yours sincerely.