Insomnia Radio
On a late autumn night, Lin Weixi lay in bed, staring at the swaying shadows of trees on the ceiling. The fluorescent hands of the bedside alarm clock showed two o'clock in the morning, but she had no desire to sleep. How many sleepless nights had she had since the class division? She had lost count.
I reached out and turned on the small radio on the bedside table. The host's deep voice came from the FM radio: "The next song is dedicated to all those who can't fall asleep late at night."
A soft guitar prelude flowed in the darkness. Lin Weixi turned the volume down to the minimum, fearing to wake up her parents next door. She turned sideways, looking at the thin moonlight outside the window, her thoughts drifting to another class just across the wall.
Ever since the class split, she'd developed a habit of listening to the radio late at night. The thoughts she'd suppressed during the day would quietly surface in the stillness of the night. She recalled running into Chen Wang in the hallway during break today. He was discussing basketball tactics with his new friends from Class 4 and hadn't even noticed her passing.
"...Have you ever been in a crowd, silently staring at a figure's back..." The lyrics hit the nail on the head.
Lin Weixi sat up gently and took out the diary that was already half filled from the bedside table drawer. With the faint light of her phone, she turned to the latest page:
"On the night of October 23rd, I couldn't sleep again. I passed him in the corridor today, and he seemed to have grown taller. The girls in Class 4 said he won another prize in the physics competition. It seems that the distance between us is no longer just that wall."
The pen scratched on the paper. She paused and continued writing:
"Sometimes I wonder if I had been as brave as Xu Ying, would the outcome have been different? But maybe it's better now. At least I can still see his smile occasionally."
She closed the diary and lay back on the bed. The radio station was playing calls from listeners, and a girl shyly said she wanted to request a song for the boy in the next class. Lin Weixi couldn't help but imagine what she would say if she called in.
"...I hope he can notice me." The girl's voice came through the radio waves, carrying the throbbing of youth.
Lin Weixi buried her face in the pillow. Didn't she have the same wish? It's just that she didn't even have the courage to call the hotline.
The next morning, she walked into the classroom with dark circles under her eyes. Chen Siyu leaned over and said mysteriously, "Wei Xi, did you know? Chen Wang has also been suffering from insomnia recently."
Lin Weixi's heart skipped a beat: "How did you know?"
"My cousin shares a dormitory with him," Shen Siyu lowered her voice, "He said he often wears headphones to listen to music in the middle of the night, and sometimes he even writes secretly."
This discovery made Lin Weixi uneasy all day. In physics class, the teacher was explaining the circuit diagram, but she couldn't help but draw a moon and a pair of headphones on the draft paper. Could it be that Chen Wang also had trouble sleeping? What would he think about late at night?
After school, she deliberately took a detour through the back door of Class 4. The classroom was empty, save for a few books scattered around Chen Wang's seat. For some unknown reason, she walked in, pretending to pack her bag.
Chen Wang's desk was tidier than she'd imagined, with textbooks arranged by size and pencil cases tightly closed. But what caught her attention was a line of small words carved into the corner: "Starry sky at three o'clock in the morning."
Her heart skipped a beat. What did this mean? Did he often wake up in the middle of the night?
That night, Lin Weixi suffered from insomnia again. She turned on the radio and the host was reading a letter from a listener: "...I wonder if the girl who runs on the playground every day knows that there is a boy who always looks at her from the classroom window..."
The story on the radio reminded her of her own worries. She picked up her phone, hesitated for a moment, and finally dialed the radio station's hotline. The moment the call was connected, her heart beat so fast it threatened to burst out of her chest.
"Hello, listener, do you have anything to say?" The host's voice came through the receiver.
"I..." Lin Weixi's voice trembled with nervousness, "I want to order a song for the students in the next class."
"Is there anything you want to say to him?"
She took a deep breath: "I hope he...can sleep well every night."
After hanging up the phone, she collapsed on the bed, her cheeks burning. The host played the song "Starry Sky" she requested and conveyed her blessings. Lin Weixi buried her face in the quilt, regretting her impulsiveness but also feeling a sense of relief.
On Monday morning, she walked into campus with darker circles under her eyes. At the stairs, she unexpectedly ran into Chen Wang. He also looked a little tired, but when he saw her, his eyes suddenly lit up.
"Friday night," he said suddenly, "I heard someone requesting a song on the radio."
Lin Weixi's heart stopped suddenly.
"That song," he smiled, "happens to be the one I've been listening to a lot lately."
They walked up the stairs side by side, neither of them saying anything. But at the fork in the road on the second floor, Chen Wang suddenly said, "Actually, the starry sky at three in the morning is really beautiful."
Lin Weixi stood there in a daze, watching his back disappear at the entrance of Class 4. So, he knew? Or was it just a coincidence?
That night, she slept well, a rare night of tossing and turning. In her dreams, there were no sleepless nights, only starlight and soft music. When she woke up, she wrote in her diary:
"It turns out I'm not the only one suffering from insomnia. It turns out that in the same late night, we also looked up at the same starry sky. This may be the most beautiful thing about youth - even though we are separated by a wall, we still share the same moonlight."
From then on, the late-night radio was no longer a lonely companion, but a tacit secret. Whenever she couldn't sleep, she would always think of that morning and those words about the starry sky.
Occasionally, when she woke up at three in the morning, she would hum the song she had ordered for him, and imagine whether there was someone on the other side of the wall, looking at the starry sky outside the window at the same moment.
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