January 21, 2026
Yesterday I finished the last final exam of this semester. Yesterday, quite rarely, it snowed lightly—clad in silver and adorned in white, enchanting beyond compare. Though the fluttering snowflakes were hard to capture on camera even against a black background. I don’t want to go home, even though I can feel the people on campus gradually thinning out. I have to go get a haircut first anyway.
Many new routes from Changshan to Hangzhou that take only an hour and a half have been added. Very good.
In the empty dorm room, the cold assails from all directions, bursting into shivers all over my body. If the ruin of a relationship is having words on the tip of your tongue and giving up after careful thought, then a thread of a relationship spanning many years seems to be teetering on the verge of snapping.
Truly regrettable.
Permit me this grief.
Actually, in the past, there were indeed many people who took the initiative to express their affection for me, but I felt as if I were my own marionette—passive, manipulated into responding: I seem to lack the ability to respond proactively. Because the kind of goodwill they showed me was based on some shared attribute of ours. Damn it, how should I phrase this sentence? Speaking of which, I feel LR is really good at using language to express such abstract things. Once in high school, I could only describe something as “ideological,” and she immediately expressed my meaning in a concrete, tangible way. It was truly amazing.
However, her appearance at that time made me cure myself of the obvious hunchback I had while standing and walking for many years. Because I thought it looked very ugly, and there was also a very narcissistic thought, (eight characters deleted here).
This directly resulted in me becoming much taller. When I went home for the summer vacation afterward, many relatives felt like I had suddenly grown taller…
Anyway, it’s still a very bizarre thing.
It would be nice if such life-changing things happened a few more times.
Speaking of which, in the second half of last year, I sent birthday wishes to many friends: what followed was small talk, but I didn’t even know what to chat about. It seems I just wanted to wish them a happy birthday; after all, no one feels unhappy because someone wishes them a happy birthday. But what to chat about specifically? The lines of our lives have already drifted very far apart.
All along, I seem to have been exploring one theme: what exactly do I crave from others? I seem to have written down explorations of this question in all sorts of places.
In the afternoon, I ordered fried chicken to serve as both lunch and dinner. This was the coldest meal in recent days; the logistics system seemed to have frozen over right along with the sky.
Why are there still so many things left unfinished?
It’s so painful.
I feel that I have indeed learned to project goodwill toward others, but when others project goodwill toward me, I often don’t do the same.
Regarding what I wrote in May last year, my current evaluation is: every time I think I’ve grown, I find myself still completely marching in place. What she gave me was nowhere near that much. And there was no need at all for me to make such strange promises.
Coke tastes awful.
May 20, 2025.
In elementary school, the teacher said that the satirical essay is a special literary genre. In high school, ZXD, who loved literature, once suggested that he and I—who loved poetry at the time—submit articles together to the school newspaper. He seemed to want to discuss how to write essays with the Chinese teacher. Even now, deep inside a cabinet in my room back in my hometown, I still hide a small box containing many precious items from high school, including that 100th issue of the school newspaper featuring his brilliantly written piece. I miss the past. I deeply miss the past. I seem to have always been living in the past. He always called me “straight-A student,” so much so that in Class 1, where top students gathered like clouds, I always felt a faint shyness upon hearing it. Vscode plus markdown is indeed not as comfortable as word; my thoughts need to be laid out on a sufficiently soft blanket to stretch out better.
I really want to write about the many, many things that have happened recently, tangled in a thousand threads. Profoundly affecting. Someone’s silence often invites the silence of others, because silence is truly too devoid of meaning, leaving too much room for imagined hostility—a risk no one would possibly take. Not even the very person imposing silence on others. Language must break through these things. Yet compromising to the barrier of space, words lose their attached emotions, turning into dead, unchangeable, objective text displayed on an electronic screen, which again makes.
Just now, zyx reached out to me.
Starting right from this broken point, a forced transition.
Her arrival yesterday, to me, connected my present with eight years ago. A rainbow bridge over a desert. A sudden glance back across the long river of time and space. However. Is there the melancholy that things remain the same while people have changed?
Has she changed?
I really don’t know and don’t hope to and don’t want to imagine. I feel that apart from my emotions becoming extremely calm, nothing about me has changed. My personality, my soul. Matters swirl and surge toward the tip of my pen, or rather, my keyboard, wanting to write themselves down. She wouldn’t want to listen to me pour out my woes, and I couldn’t bear to do so either.
I want to know more about her.
Where is she? Where in Dalian? I want to fly to Dalian to find her, do I really want to? Who are you in my reality, reading this sentence right now? How has her appearance changed? How has her voice changed? What happened to her? Her experiences in middle school? Her experiences in high school? Her experiences in freshman year and just shortly before this very moment? She was at Changshan No. 1 High School. Of course she was there too, at the same school. But why didn’t I look for her back then? Do I dare look for her now? I miss her. Who is it that I miss? It is her, and the shadow of me in her eyes. My—the shadow of my past self that I protected with tears in my eyes, and the treasure of my past, the love of my past. Should this word be used like this? What is it that I truly want. What is her attitude toward me? I don’t know how to ask. This question is simply impossible to ask. The answer might kill all illusions. Does she actually still care about me?
Abandon illusions.
Still have to be a bit more realistic. For my goal, to shoulder my responsibility toward her under this premise. I must work hard because of this. I know what perfection looks like. That can only be my goal.
I truly, urgently believe now that love is the sinking of reason. I have really never had this feeling before. It is a feeling I’ve never had with any other girl.
To give her a wonderful future, I must keep working hard. This is my motivation.
Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
Talked a lot with her last night. Filled in many doubts and blanks. Realized many misunderstandings.
The past is gone.
If life were ever as when first we met, why then should autumn winds grieve the painted fan!
Lightly changed is the heart of yore, yet thou say’st the heart of yore is all too quick to turn.
On Mount Li our words ceased at the clear midnight’s wane; though tears fall as rain to the chimes, no plaint doth remain.
Not a shred left.
The past! The past! The past! How wonderful the past was……
I miss it.
But what exactly am I missing.
Life is gradually collapsing. It is gradually deteriorating.
It has been going downhill ever since birth until now.
Starting to get the feeling that I am unworthy.