Endless Light Snow

I always think back to that time filled with exam papers and chalk dust in the dusk of early autumn in the north. Back then, the old locust tree outside the classroom window swayed its sparse shadow in the wind, and sunlight cast mottled patches on the open textbooks through the glass, like some silent, fading code. The air was always filled with a complex smell—the bitter scent of ink, the plastic smell of cheap ballpoint pens, the rust of winter heating pipes, and the unique, clean scent of youth mixed with sweat and soap. This smell formed the backdrop of my entire adolescence and became the first token I recall when looking back at that era countless times. This is a story about 'waiting' and 'fulfillment,' a love that quietly bloomed and was quietly sealed under the huge shadow of the college entrance exam, in the name of 'for your own good.' Now I think of it, it wasn't like a passionate romance, but more like an unfinished prose poem, a deliberately left blank rhyme. It concerns a girl's forbearance and wisdom, and a boy's growth and awakening. It ultimately did not lead to the 'perfect ending' as defined by the world, yet it left an indelible image on the negative of my life. — Description from novelcodex.org