The Monday after the beach trip looked ordinary from the outside. The same flag flapped above the school gate. The same late bell threatened the same stragglers. The same stack of reference books waited in the faculty office. And yet, for Lin Keqing, everything felt reset—like someone had lifted the page of summer and laid down a clean sheet beneath.
She took her seat in 12A3, sunlight slanting across her desk. The classroom smelled faintly of chalk, floor polish, and new textbooks. Students compared tans, swapped photos, complained about unfinished holiday worksheets. She opened her notebook to a blank page, but instead of copying the date she found herself sketching: five dots on a shoreline… then shallow arcs of waves curling over them. Footprints.
Her fingers hovered. The sketch shifted—she drew one pair of prints closer to another, then a line linking them. The memory came back whole: a Ferris wheel cabin, the sea below, a warm hand closing over hers. I'm glad you're here. She had never written those words down. Maybe she didn't need to. They were stitched somewhere quieter.
"Keqing?"
She looked up. Xu Yujin had leaned across the aisle. "You zoning out or inventing a new historical diagram?"
Keqing covered the sketch with her sleeve. "Neither."
"Liar," Liu Tianxue said from behind, already grinning. "By the way, rumor report: you were seen at the coast."
"Half the grade was at the coast," Keqing deflected.
"Yeah," Tianxue said. "But not all of them came back drawing waves in homeroom."
Keqing blushed and turned the page.
First break came too fast. In the hallway, students flowed like currents heading in opposite directions. Keqing met up with Yujin and Tianxue near the stairwell window, where heat pooled in the glass.
"I'm doing it," Le Yahan announced, sliding in breathless, still half-zipping her jacket. "I'm taking a gap year. Decided."
"You—what?" Yujin choked.
Tianxue froze mid-bite of a sesame bun.
Yahan folded her arms. "I said it out loud so now it's real."
Yujin recovered first. "You can't just—people study twelve years and then throw a dart at a calendar."
"I'm not throwing darts," Yahan said. "I'm refusing to sign a contract for a life I don't want."
"Have you told your parents?" Tianxue asked.
"Not yet."
"Translation," Yujin muttered, "definitely not yet."
Keqing listened. The old Keqing might have stayed silent and small. Today she said, "At least she's naming the thing. That's more than most of us do."
Yahan shot her a grateful look. "See? Validation."
Yujin sighed. "Fine. I'll be the boring one who downloads timelines and scholarship spreadsheets. Somebody has to keep you from living in a tent."
"Vendor food truck," Yahan corrected. "Aesthetic."
They laughed. The bell cut through the noise, scattering them back to rooms, but the conversation left a thread in the air—choice, risk, self.
Lunchtime tasted of cafeteria soy sauce and mild chaos. Keqing queued, took a tray, found a space under the big maple. Midway through peeling a hard-boiled egg, her phone buzzed.
Gu Yuyan:Thanks for coming.
No punctuation. No context. The timestamp: five minutes earlier. He must have typed it between one class and the next.
Her chest tightened. She wiped her fingers and typed, erased, retyped.
I was glad to be there.
Too much? She deleted glad, replaced it.
Me too.
She sent it before she could edit herself into silence.
A full minute passed. Nothing. She ate the egg. Two minutes. Still nothing. She poured soup. When she finally checked again there was still no reply—and she realized she wasn't waiting for one. The message had been complete by itself.
Afternoon classes dragged. Economics blurred. Civics dissolved. By the time the final bell rang, Keqing's handwriting had slanted downhill. She packed slowly, buying time. Part of her hoped she would "accidentally" cross paths with the natural science building. Part of her dreaded it.
She didn't have to manufacture coincidence. Halfway down the covered walkway that linked the academic wings, she heard a voice she'd come to recognize even when it was clipped and quiet: Gu Yuyan's.
He stood just inside an alcove outside 12B2, phone to his ear, back to the wall. His posture was straight but rigid; the sort of stillness that came from bracing.
"…No, the practice exam curve was weird," he said, low. "It doesn't—yes, I saw the ranking. Dad—" He paused. "I am studying."
A pause. She could faintly hear the tinny spill of an adult male voice—sharp, insistent.
"I haven't decided a specific major." Another pause. "No, not just engineering. I said I haven't decided."
Longer pause. Yuyan's jaw shifted. "We're not talking about wasting anything. I'm allowed to—" He stopped. "I'm going to class." Click.
He lowered the phone and let it hang. For a heartbeat he didn't move.
Keqing stepped into view. "Hi."
His head turned. The tension behind his eyes receded by a fraction. "Hey."
She nodded toward the phone. "Bad?"
"Predictable." He tucked it away. "He's benchmarking me against a chart on his desktop."
"Sounds scientific."
"Sounds exhausting."
She didn't push. Instead: "Library? I owe you for the last history review."
He exhaled—less a laugh than a release. "Okay."
The library's late-afternoon light sloped gold across long tables. A fan ticked overhead. They chose a back corner half-hidden by geography atlases. Keqing spread her English workbook; Yuyan opened thermodynamics but didn't turn a page.
"Does he always talk to you like that?" she asked quietly.
"When he's worried," he said.
"So… a lot."
"Yeah." He twirled his pen. "He thinks pressure is fertilizer."
"And your mom?"
"She thinks sunlight matters too." Something softened in his expression. "She texted after we left the café. Said she liked seeing me laugh."
Keqing smiled. "She told me last time that you'd been quiet since you were a baby."
"Probably because he was timing my breathing," Yuyan deadpanned.
She laughed; the sound rattled off the shelves, small and bright. After that they actually studied—twenty quiet minutes, five explaining clauses, ten arguing whether a sample problem was worded badly. At some point their knees brushed. Neither moved.
When the bell for evening prep cracked through the speakers, Yuyan packed but did not stand. "There's a university fair this weekend," he said. "Several of the top schools are sending reps. Will you go?"
"I was thinking about it."
"Come with me?" he asked.
She looked at him fully. "Yes."
He nodded, as if confirming an experiment variable. "I'll message you the schedule."
Evening self-study dispersed them all into separate corners of campus life. Keqing returned home later than usual. Her grandmother had left a note and a reheated bowl of soup. While she ate, her phone lit with two messages.
Dad:Reached the project site. Signal is bad but I'll call Friday. Study hard, don't forget to sleep.
She typed back a photo of the soup and: Eating. Studying. Sleeping sometimes.
He sent a thumbs-up emoji—rare enough to make her grin.
The second message was a photo from a group chat: Fang Zichen had captured all of them mid-sprint on the beach, salt spray behind them, their names half-written in the sand. Caption: Proof we had freedom once.
Replies stacked beneath—Yahan: My hair??, Yuke: Your baggage ratio to body weight??, Yuyan: … (no text, but he'd added a tiny wave emoji). Keqing saved the photo.
Tuesday blurred—quizzes, drills, review packets. By midweek, the school gossip net had already spun new charts ranking who might test into national key universities. Names rose, names fell. Someone pinned a printed list outside the cafeteria. Keqing walked past and tried not to look—but saw anyway: Gu, YUYAN – projected Tier 1 (STEM).
Someone had scribbled beside it in pen: Unless he runs off to write poetry.
She snorted. Who would— Then she recognized the handwriting. Yuyan himself.
Wednesday's storm rolled in early, smearing the sky to slate. Between classes, Keqing hurried across the open walkway and nearly collided with Chen Yuke, who was standing under the eaves, texting.
"You look wrecked," he said conversationally.
"So do you."
"Study date?"
"Wrong ban," she pointed out.
"Public library has no bans," he countered. "Actually—that's what I came to say. Yahan asked if you'd come Saturday morning. She wants to pretend she's researching gap years but will probably color-code pens."
"I'll come," Keqing said. "After the fair?"
"Deal." He pocketed his phone, then added, voice lower, "Thanks for backing her up. She needed someone who wouldn't laugh."
"I didn't do anything."
"You didn't dismiss her," he said. "That's something."
He jogged off before she could answer.
That night, rain battered the dormitory roof. Homework sprawled across Keqing's desk. Between grammar drills she opened the poetry book Gu Yuyan had once chosen for her. A faded admission ticket—City Literary Book Fair, not used—still marked one of the middle pages. They'd meant to go. They never had.
She ran a thumb over the paper until her phone buzzed.
Gu Yuyan:Tomorrow. After last period. Library back table?
No explanation.
She stared at the screen. The rain hit harder. She typed:Okay. Then added: I'll bring highlighters.
After a beat came his reply: Bring the poetry too.
She set the ticket between her fingers like a promise.
She closed her journal with a final line:
"We left marks in wet sand, knowing the tide would take them. Maybe that's not loss. Maybe it's reminder—to look up, to look for one another, to keep walking while the water smooths behind us. Threads don't always show, but they hold."
She dated the page and slid the ticket inside.
Outside, the rain softened. Somewhere across town, in a different building, a boy who measured life in quiet increments was waiting for tomorrow.