Echo of Dreams

Outside the classroom window, the rain was pouring down.

It was a late afternoon during the senior year of high school. The blackboard was emblazoned with the words "Countdown to the College Entrance Examination: Fifty Days." The red numbers were like bombs being detonated, drawing ever closer to the finish line each day.

The classroom was filled with the smell of ink from exam papers, and the damp air mixed with the scent of old wooden desks.

The sound of rain was like countless tiny fingers tapping on the glass and tin roof, dense yet not noisy. Instead, it was like a low-frequency vibration, penetrating deep into the eardrums, even causing a slight tremor in the brain. It was a tranquil embrace of rising moisture, like the soft whispers in ASMR, sliding along the skin into the mind, making it impossible to be distracted.

I long for autumn to stand in my dreams.

Below the podium, the boy handed over a note, saying, "Happy 21st birthday." His voice was low and a little hoarse as he said this.

The boy's clean and youthful face flickered in the rain and mist. She had always thought he looked like Liu Haoran—his eyes were dark and bright, his gaze frank, like a Shiba Inu with its ears standing straight up, completely unguarded.

She knew very well that this was a dream. In the dream, she was transparent, an observer, someone who had already left the dream world, who happened to pass through the corridor of memories and was pulled into a frame of film by a thunderstorm.

In her dream, she silently thought, "He's here again." For the past few years, she has always dreamed of him without any warning.

She woke up suddenly.

The sound of that rain still lingers in my ears, falling densely.

She slowly got out of bed. It was pitch black outside the window, and the streetlights were blurred by the rain into a warm yellow hue, like candlelight burning underwater.

She couldn't resist opening the window, and a cool breeze rushed in, carrying the scent of earth, the rawness of plants, and the damp smell of the street—like a world that had just taken a bath. The sound of rain fell like a blanket from the sky, enveloping everything.

As she gazed at the scene, a moment passed between dream and reality, and then the image of him from high school slowly surfaced in her mind.

Her high school deskmate.

Their relationship was always relaxed and natural: they discussed problems together after class, ate lunch side by side, and went to the food stalls at the school gate before evening self-study, eating at all kinds of restaurants.

Sometimes they would share an earphone while doing their homework in a corner of the classroom, each listening to Jay Chou, Mayday, or Stefanie Sun on one side. He would accompany her to wait for the bus after school, and sometimes he would even sit with her at a stop near her home before quietly going home alone.

It's a tacit closeness, an unspoken affection, and a relationship without clear boundaries.

One day, just before evening self-study ended, it suddenly started raining heavily.

The rain was so heavy it felt like the sky was about to collapse, and thunder rumbled outside the classroom windows. The dim yellow light inside the classroom illuminated half of his face, making it appear bright and tense.

“I like you,” he said. The sentence was clean, straightforward, unadorned, and without any joking tone.

When he said this, his voice was deep and a little hoarse, like a magnetic tone coming from deep in his throat, resonating with the sound of rain outside the window on a certain frequency, making people unable to help but hold their breath.

Pan Qiu froze for a few seconds. The sound of the rain seemed to suddenly amplify, filling every crevice. She could hear her own heart pounding. She felt this was a sudden, overwhelming feeling—a surge of heat that rose abruptly from her chest to the tips of her ears.

They later agreed to take the entrance exam for the same university together. However, he failed and had to repeat the year.

She had thought that once he passed the exam again, they could rekindle their old understanding. But whether it was due to distance, time, or some other reason, he never came back.

He faded from her life and from her social media, leaving only occasional dreams to remind her that he had once been here.

Five years have passed since that day and that rain.

The dreams became fewer and fewer, lighter and lighter, yet they never disappeared. Sometimes he would walk up to her in her dreams and say, "You haven't changed at all." Sometimes he would stand in front of the teaching building with an umbrella and say, "Shall we go eat beef noodles?" Sometimes he would say nothing, just smile at her.

Panqiu never responded. In her dream, she remained silent, simply standing and watching.

She is not someone who likes to fantasize about love.

People who study psychology are often better able to see through the illusions of self-projection than others. She had also tried to analyze why she kept dreaming about him.

According to Freud, these dreams are nothing more than "the disguised fulfillment of unconscious desires," an outlet for emotions repressed during the day and secretly released at night.

It could also be the psychological residue left by "unfinished business," like a background program on a computer that hasn't been closed, popping up reminders in your mind from time to time.

But she felt it was more like what Jung said: dreams are the soul's self-repair. Emotions that cannot be developed in reality are integrated in dreams in a symbolic way.

The boy in her dream was no longer the boy in reality, but a "symbol" of gentleness, steadfastness, and something that had never truly left her memory. He represented the sense of security and companionship she felt during her youth, that afternoon when she felt warmth despite the immense pressure.

He may have long forgotten her. But his dreams held him captive.

She was definitely not trying to continue any unfinished story, but she ultimately didn't know why.

Years have passed since that rain, and she knows that the thrill she felt then is long gone. She has never met someone with such understanding again, nor experienced such a heart-fluttering moment. Like after a rain, the ground dries, the air warms, people disperse, and only dreams remain, oblivious to the passage of time, playing on and on.

She didn't succumb to it. She has always been someone who believes in "mutual support."

In this era, technology has made communication effortless; messages can travel across mountains and oceans, reaching each other in seconds. If you truly want to connect, you can send a simple "Are you there?" even in the dead of night. No contact, in itself, is an answer.

There's no need for hysterical confirmation, nor for agonizingly waiting for explanations.

If a relationship can no longer last, she won't linger in the same place for long.

Love is not her whole life, nor is it the only way she measures happiness. Rather than dwelling on someone's departure, she prefers to spend her time exploring the world, learning, experiencing, and discovering "who she really is."

She enjoys trying new rhythms of life, even if it's just changing the way she cooks or buying a bouquet of flowers at a street-side farmers' market. She gets excited when she understands a research paper, and she'll happily open the window to smell the earthy scent of a sudden rain.

She has always believed that happiness is not something that is given, but rather something that accumulates gradually from these everyday fragments—a meal cooked with care, a conversation that goes smoothly, and an insight into and acceptance of inner changes.

The person who once made her heart race has become a tender memory, lying quietly in some corner of her life. And she still has a vast world to explore.

She gently closed the window. The room fell silent. She lay back down on the bed, pulled the blanket over her shoulders, closed her eyes, and silently said, "Go to sleep. I have to attend the department's orientation tomorrow; I can't be late."