Summer vacation silence

The bell rang, signaling the end of the final exams, and the entire campus was instantly flooded with cheers of liberation. Lin Weixi slowly packed her schoolbag, her gaze unconsciously drifting to the window—Chen Wang was celebrating with a few boys from the basketball team, high-fiving them. The sunlight shone on his smiling face, so bright that it was hard to look away.

"What are your plans for summer vacation?" Shen Siyu asked excitedly as she stuffed textbooks into her schoolbag. "Do you want to go to the beach together?"

Lin Weixi responded vaguely, but her mind was entirely on another matter: for two whole months, for sixty whole days, she would never see the figure she could see every day again.

After school, the classmates said goodbye to each other and agreed to get together during the holidays. Lin Weixi mustered up the courage to walk over to Chen Wang, who was tidying up his locker.

"Happy summer vacation." She said softly, her voice almost drowned out by the noise around her.

Chen Wang turned his head and showed his signature smile: "You too, happy summer vacation."

These five short words became their only farewell this summer.

The days of July passed slowly and thickly. Lin Weixi followed her daily schedule, studying, practicing piano, and reading. Her life was as regular as a precise clock. But every afternoon at four o'clock, she would unconsciously look out the window - that was usually the time for school to end, and also the time for basketball team training.

Once, while passing by a school, she heard the familiar sound of dribbling a basketball on the court. Her heartbeat raced, and she practically ran around the school gate, only to see only a few younger boys playing basketball. The feeling of loss at that moment washed over her like a tide.

She began checking her phone frequently, even though she knew Chen Wang rarely posted anything. His profile picture on social media was still the same photo he'd taken at the basketball court, his bio was blank, and his last update was from three months ago.

"Wei Xi, look at this photo!" Chen Siyu excitedly showed a photo of the beach during the video call. "The sea is so blue. I wish you could come."

Lin Weixi looked at her best friend in the photo, smiling like a flower, and suddenly asked, "Do you have any news about Chen Wang?"

"Chen Wang?" Shen Siyu was stunned for a moment. "I heard he went to a basketball training camp and seems to be out of town. What happened?"

"Nothing, just asking." Lin Weixi quickly changed the subject, but her cheeks were quietly getting hot.

In mid-July, the city held a high school basketball league. Lin Weixi saw the game preview on the local news feed and went to the gymnasium with the mentality of giving it a try.

The audience was buzzing with activity, and she found a corner seat. When Chen Wang took the court wearing his familiar number 7 jersey, her heartbeat nearly leaped out of her chest. After not seeing him for two months, he seemed taller, his skin a healthy tan.

Throughout the game, her eyes followed the red figure. When he scored, she clutched the corner of his shirt tightly; when he made a mistake, she held her breath. When the whistle blew at the end of the game and his team won, Lin Weixi stood up and applauded with the crowd, her eyes inexplicably hot.

After the game, the players were surrounded by their family and friends. Lin Weixi stood on the outskirts of the crowd, watching Chen Wang and his teammates high-five in celebration. He smiled happily, revealing two rows of neat white teeth. At that moment, she suddenly wanted to rush up and say "congratulations", but her feet seemed to be nailed to the spot.

In the end, she just turned around and left silently, as quietly as she came.

The cicadas in August were even more noisy. Lin Weixi began to organize her notes for this semester. When she turned to the key points that Chen Wang had lent her, her fingertips would unconsciously linger. Those familiar handwriting and illustrations became the only bridge connecting her to that distant summer.

One time when she was tidying up her desk, she found a note stuck in a physics book. It was written by Chen Wang: "This formula is easy to make mistakes, pay attention to the symbols." There was a small exclamation mark in the lower right corner of the note.

She carefully put the note into her diary, like collecting a precious artifact.

Late one night in mid-August, Lin Weixi was awakened by thunder. Heavy rain pounded against the window, and she suddenly remembered Chen Wang saying that he loved practicing on rainy days. This thought made her unable to sleep anymore, so she simply got up and continued doing her summer homework.

At three in the morning, the rain gradually subsided. She for some reason turned on her phone and refreshed the homepage that rarely updated. Just as she was about to turn off her phone, a new update popped up:

"The court in the early morning, the air is very fresh after the rain." The accompanying picture is a basketball court wet by rain, and the accumulated water on the ground reflects the light of street lamps.

Lin Weixi looked at the photo again and again, trying to find more information from it. Finally, she gently clicked "like" - this was the first time she liked his dynamic, like a cautious test.

The next day, the first thing she did when she woke up was check her phone. Chen Wang hadn't replied to her like, but he hadn't un-liked it either. This discovery made her feel elated for the rest of the day, as if there was a tacit secret between them.

In the last week of summer vacation, Lin Weixi began to look forward to the start of school. She imagined the scene of reunion and rehearsed in her mind countless times what tone to use when saying "long time no see".

However, when the first day of school finally arrived, everything was disappointingly dull. Chen Wang simply nodded at her as usual: "How was your summer vacation?"

"Not bad." She answered softly, but her heart was filled with thousands of words.

That night, Lin Weixi wrote the last entry of her summer vacation in her diary:

"This summer, we only said two words: one goodbye, one greeting. But in my memory, this summer feels longer than any other. Perhaps this is what secret love is like, stretching every tiny moment into eternity."

Closing the diary, she heard the chirping of early autumn insects outside the window. She thought of the photo of the basketball court on that rainy night, of his leaping figure during the game, and of the small note.

This seemingly quiet summer vacation has actually already blossomed into a silent sea of ​​flowers in her heart.