Short Youth Love Stories: love confession
Chapter One: Old Times
Old times flow gently on the yellowing letter paper. Sheets upon sheets, thin and rustling as they are written on, carry the most secret and beautiful memories of our youth. The spring blossoms, autumn moons, and flowing sands of life are all expressed in writing, sent to another person through shared letters and waiting.
In my first year of high school, I was deskmates with Sweet Potato.
While everyone else was immersed in the tension and routine of high school studies, the two of us, though good students, were not particularly obedient or well-behaved. As a result, our homeroom teacher seated us together. It was rare for a girl and a boy to get along like buddies, so initially, we were very happy with each other’s company.
But at some point, the atmosphere between us changed. I noticed that he no longer joked around as casually as before. He would look at me with a meaningful gaze and sometimes remain silent for an entire class without saying a word.
Later, we were assigned new seats. For an entire semester, we didn’t speak to each other, as if we were holding onto some inexplicable grudge, with neither of us willing to make the first move. Neither of us knew where this strange emotion came from. One day, I suddenly felt puzzled—how had we gone from being so close to becoming strangers who didn’t even speak? I bought a notebook, wrote a message in it, and quietly gave it to him, expressing my hope that we could go back to being friends. My gesture was warmly received by him. By a stroke of luck, when we were reassigned seats, we ended up sitting in front and behind each other—me in front, him behind—bringing us closer again.
During the last semester of senior year, even I, who had never cared much about studies, felt the invisible pressure of the college entrance exams. I remember one Chinese class when we were reviewing Cao Cao’s poem “Viewing the Blue Sea.” Jokingly, I said that the poem contained my nickname. Sweet Potato then used his knowledge of permutations and combinations from math class to try every possible option. I never told him the answer, and he was quite disappointed. After class, he handed me the Chinese textbook, with a letter hidden inside.
That letter completely changed our relationship. He finally confessed all his feelings to me. But I, suddenly faced with such a confession, was thrown into a state of panic. I knew we could never go back to being just friends, perhaps because my heart was already occupied by another boy. I wrote back to him, rejecting him with the most straightforward and harsh words, urging him to focus on his studies and not get distracted.
He still wrote to me occasionally, folding each letter into shapes like leaves of longing or hearts intertwined, always trying to make me laugh with jokes. To his friends, I was just a girl who didn’t appreciate what she had. Liking someone is probably this irrational—you won’t accept them just because they treat you well, but rather because of a fleeting feeling.
Affected by this, his studies suffered, and he didn’t do well on the college entrance exams. We ended up at different universities, drifting apart and eventually out of each other’s lives.
Many years later, whenever I think back to this, I feel a pang of guilt. How brave and fearless he must have been to write that letter and confess to me, yet I stubbornly refused to give him any chance.
As for the boy I liked, after starting university, I knew I would never have the chance to meet or confess to him, so I wrote a letter and sent it to him as he returned to school to repeat his senior year. In the letter, I described what university life was like, how beautiful the sky by the sea was, and my once-complicated feelings. He quickly replied, and his letter was also folded into a beautiful shape, with delicate and flowing handwriting. That was the only time we ever corresponded. My heart settled, and I moved on with my new university life.
I continued to write letters to friends studying in other cities and to a boy who eventually became my boyfriend, though we exchanged letters for a long time before that happened. The stories within could probably fill a book.
Chapter Two: The “Love Letter” of a Hated Girl
Perhaps many things will be forgotten, but I will always remember the autumn of 1996. I had just entered middle school and was getting to know my new deskmate when the teacher suddenly asked us to switch seats with another girl. Having to adapt to a new deskmate was already frustrating enough, but when the girl moved her desk next to mine, she was crying as if she had been wronged. The boys in the class gathered around to comfort her and even criticized me for not doing the same. I felt so unjustly treated and developed a deep dislike for her—a spoiled, crybaby girl who was impossible to like.
My relationship with my new deskmate remained icy—no talking, no laughing. As soon as class ended, I would leave my seat, ignoring her attempts to be friendly or her smiles. This continued for two months until, perhaps, my attitude exceeded her limit of tolerance. One day after school, I found a letter in my bag. It was in a light pink envelope, decorated with a cartoon girl, with my name beautifully written on it. The letter expressed her confusion over why I was so unfriendly, how it made her feel sad and helpless, and at the end, she expressed her hope that we could have a friendly relationship.
At that sensitive and melancholic age, I was as prickly as a hedgehog. As I read her letter, a trace of warmth unexpectedly flickered in my heart. That night, I seriously replied to her, telling her how I hated her fussiness, her crying, her pretentiousness… The next day, while she was out, I slipped the letter into her bag, pretending nothing had happened, though my heart pounded as if a drum was beating inside it—a feeling no less thrilling and exciting than a first love. Sure enough, the next day she wrote back with sincere explanations. And so, back and forth, we expressed through letters what we were too shy to say out loud—our misunderstandings, feelings, anxieties, and confusions—sharing them, solving them together, encouraging each other. Our previously lonely and self-conscious lives, made that way by the absence of our parents, became joyful and fulfilling. Our classmates, who knew about our correspondence, joked that it was silly to write letters when we were sitting right next to each other, calling it too sticky-sweet.
In high school, though we attended different schools, we exchanged letters about study materials and encouraged each other to get through the dark days before the college entrance exams. In college, there was a time when I felt neglected because she was preoccupied with her love life, and I wrote her a harsh letter accusing her of prioritizing romance over friendship. She wrote back explaining that we had grown up and developed our own lives and relationships, but that wouldn’t affect our friendship. Her words made me realize how childish and selfish I had been. Later, she told me that my accusatory letter had made her cry all night.
We continued writing to each other until we graduated from college. Although her initial overtures had left me unsure of how to respond, I now look back on them with gratitude. I’m grateful for that sentimental time when we loved writing “love letters,” which left the mark of youth on the passage of time. I’m grateful for her tolerance and kindness, which made our lives more positive and optimistic because of each other.
Many years later, Fan Weiqi’s song “One Like Summer, One Like Autumn” perfectly captured our story.
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
