The corridor after the show
On a July afternoon, the sun shone obliquely into the empty teaching building. Lin Weixi walked alone in the corridor on the third floor, her footsteps echoing in the silence. A week had passed since the graduation ceremony, and only a few students had returned to pick up their materials on campus.
She paused in front of a familiar classroom door. The sign for Grade 2 (Grade 3) was still hanging on the door, and through the glass windows she could see neatly arranged desks and chairs covered in a thin layer of dust. The window seat she had sat in for two years was now empty, with only the shadow cast by the sun.
Her fingers gently pushed open the classroom door, the old hinges creaking softly. The air was filled with the scent of chalk dust and old books, mingling with the characteristic summer heat. She walked to her seat and found a line of small words written in pencil on her desk: "Goodbye, Youth."
She didn't know which classmate had left this farewell. She gently stroked the words with her fingers, as if she could touch the traces of time.
The seats in the back row remained the same as they had been on graduation day. Surprisingly, a wrinkled physics workbook was left in Chen Wang's desk. On the cover page was his familiar handwriting, with a circuit diagram and a small rocket pattern. Lin Weixi carefully put the workbook into her schoolbag, as if she were storing a secret that was about to be forgotten.
The final report cards were still posted on the bulletin board at the end of the corridor. Chen Wang's name remained firmly at the top, while hers sat a bit above the middle, separated by more than twenty unfamiliar names. Perhaps this, she thought, was the truest distance between them.
Reaching the corner of the second floor, she subconsciously slowed her pace. This was where she'd accidentally dropped her homework book during her freshman year of high school, and where Chen Wang had first helped her pick it up. The sunlight still streamed in from that angle, casting dappled shadows on the floor, but the then bustling corridor was now filled with silence.
At the door of the teachers' office, she met her head teacher who was packing up his things.
"Lin Weixi? Why haven't you left school yet?" The teacher pushed his glasses, holding a cardboard box full of materials in his arms.
"Come to pick up what you left behind." She answered softly.
The teacher nodded, then suddenly remembered something: "Oh, by the way, when Chen Wang came back a few days ago, he also said that he had left an important notebook in the classroom."
Her heart skipped a beat at that. He had come back before.
As the sun set, she walked to the stands beside the playground. So many memories were recorded there—the shouts of joy during basketball games, the cheers at sports meets, and those afternoons spent secretly watching. Now the track was empty, with only the evening breeze caressing the lawn.
At the top of the stands, she spotted a familiar pattern: the outline of a camera made of stones, with the Chinese character "望" (Look) next to it. The discovery brought a slight warmth to her eyes. Was it him? Or was it some mischievous student's prank?
When she was about to leave, she met Zhou Xu, who was also late, at the stairs.
"Come to say goodbye?" he asked, with his schoolbag slung over his shoulder.
She nodded. "You too?"
Zhou Xu smiled and pointed to the basketball court in the distance: "It's been three years. We should say goodbye properly."
They walked side by side in the campus as dusk deepened. When passing by the basketball court, Lin Weixi saw the basket swaying gently in the evening breeze, as if waving goodbye.
"Chen Wang came back yesterday," Zhou Xu said suddenly, "and sat in your classroom for a long time."
She paused, waiting for what was to come.
"He said that once you leave some places, you can never go back." Zhou Xu looked toward the teaching building, "Just like youth."
These words echoed softly in the twilight. Lin Weixi thought of Chen Wang's expression when he said this, which must have been the kind of gentleness with a hint of melancholy.
When they said goodbye at the school gate, Zhou Xu handed her an envelope: "Chen Wang asked me to pass it on. He was afraid it would be too sad to give it to you in person."
The envelope was light, containing only a single photo. It was a photo of them together on graduation day, with a new line of words added to the back: "May you and I become what we want to be."
On the way home, she looked at the photo again and again. The setting sun stretched her shadow very long, just like the past three years.
That night, Lin Weixi drew an empty corridor in her diary. At the end of the corridor was an open door, and outside the door was the dazzling sunlight. She wrote next to it:
"It turns out that it's not just youth that's gone, but also those careful thoughts. But strangely, I don't feel sad. Because the roads we walked together and the scenery we saw have become a part of life."
She closed her diary, and looked out the window at the twinkling stars. This summer was coming to an end, and a new story was slowly unfolding in another place.
Just like Chen Wang said, once you leave some places, you can never go back. But those beautiful things will always remain in your memory, shining brightly.
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