Memory Recall
The Princeton morning light streamed through the blinds, casting a zebra-like pattern across the open diary. Chen Wang sat on the carpet in the same position he'd been in the early morning, his coffee long gone cold. Those elegant words, like a key, suddenly unlocked the secret chamber of his memory.
The morning light shone on the yellowed pages of the diary. He gently stroked the handwriting, as if he could touch the warmth of the writing. In the autumn of 2009, that page in the corridor of the teaching building recorded the time when he helped her pick up the scattered homework books. Now he clearly remembered that day, the tips of Lin Weixi's ears were red, not because of embarrassment, but because of the shyness of a girl whose secrets were exposed.
Turning to the winter of 2010, the diary entry about the Christmas party, he found himself wearing an anonymous scarf. The memory suddenly became vivid—that gray cashmere scarf had indeed inexplicably appeared in his drawer, and he had worn it for three full winters, until the fleece frayed. It turned out that warmth had long concealed someone's unspoken concern.
When he saw the backstage footage of the basketball arena in the spring of 2012, he suddenly realized something. The judges had praised the composition of "Moonlight Court," and he had always felt that the blurry figure in the corner looked familiar. Now he understood it was a hidden Easter egg reserved by the photographer for himself, a girl's cautious confession.
What most weighed on his mind was the account from the school rooftop in the summer of 2013. There were indeed rumors of crying on the rooftop just before graduation. He was worried about his sister's condition at the time and had asked Zhou Xu to check on her. Now thinking about it, if he had been more attentive, he might have spotted the figure weeping for him.
As sunlight gradually filled the room, he continued to flip through the chapters from his college years. Those "coincidences" he had thought were fate now revealed a carefully calculated trajectory:
The diary entry from October 2014 recorded that "I waited for him by the window on the third floor of the library for three consecutive weeks." No wonder I always "accidentally" ran into her holding a photo album at the same place.
The footer note in March 2015 read, "The second button of his shirt is loose." This detail, which he himself had not even noticed, was measured by others with a ruler-like gaze.
His fingers trembled slightly as he turned to the record for Christmas Eve 2017:
"The lights in his lab were still on, and I stood in the snow until the early morning. When security came to chase me away, he happened to be coming downstairs to buy coffee. I said I was taking pictures of the snow scene, and he handed me a hot pack and said, 'Keep warm.'"
He did remember that snowy night, the girl in the white down jacket fiddling with her camera under the streetlight. At the time, he had been puzzled as to why it took three hours to photograph a snowy scene. Now, he understood the persistence of that wait.
The afternoon sun was a bit dazzling, and he turned to the end of the diary. The paragraph about the trip to Norway in 2022 read:
"He was on a video conference when the aurora appeared, and in the corner of the camera you could see his hands typing on the keyboard. I took 134 photos, and this one, with his ring finger slightly bent, is the most similar to the way he used to hold a pen."
He subconsciously curled his fingers - this habit that he had never noticed was captured accurately by another camera after thirteen years.
At dusk, he closed his diary. Those fragments scattered through the years: the reddened tips of her ears when they met in the hallway, her hesitant gaze on the podium, her signature next to his in the graduation album...all connected now, illuminating all that had been overlooked like the Milky Way.
As the sun set, he clicked on Lin Weixi's WeChat Moments. The latest update was a timeline for the Northern Lights, noting the viewing window. Zooming in, he spotted a line of small text in the corner of the aurora forecast: "Some waiting requires the cooperation of the entire universe."
Maple leaves drifted outside the window, and he thought of quantum entanglement, as he'd learned in physics class: how two particles, even light-years apart, maintain a mysterious connection. Perhaps some emotions simply obeyed the same laws—even across vast distances, they had once resonated with each other.
This discovery brought a slight warmth to his eyes. It wasn't regret, but a deep pity for the time he'd neglected. It turned out that while he was chasing the stars, there had always been a pair of eyes watching him tenderly from behind.
As night fell, he gently wrote a line on the blank space on the last page of his diary:
"If I had known that youth is fleeting, I should have looked at you more."
But time never flows back for anyone, and some realizations always come too late. Just like the brightest star in the night sky, its light takes years to reach Earth, and by the time we see it, it may no longer be in its original position.
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