Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Gu Shi’an was true to his word. He really did start studying hard.

From what he told me, his parents both thought he’d turned over a new leaf, and even the teachers at school had become much warmer toward him.

[Qingqing, we’ve known each other for so long, but I still don’t know what you look like,] Gu Shi’an suddenly asked.

[What else would I look like? Two eyes, one nose, and one mouth,] I replied, puzzled. [Why are you asking?]

[I just suddenly feel it’s such a shame. I can only correspond with you through this diary. I can’t hear your voice or see what you look like.]

[It’s fine. Just think of me as a pen pal,] I said. The truth was, I was curious about what Gu Shi’an looked like too. But there wasn’t only a diary between us-there was a hundred years of time.

Sensing that Gu Shi’an still seemed a little down, I racked my brains and used every last bit of artistic skill I had to draw a tiny, simple self-portrait on the page.

My drawing skills were average. The facial features were scribbled on so carelessly that you could only barely tell it was a person.

But Gu Shi’an was delighted. Beside it, he wrote, [Pretty.]

After a pause, he added, [Very pretty.]

The next day, when I opened the diary to that page again, I was shocked to find that the self-portrait I had drawn had disappeared. In its place was a round hole, as if someone had cut it out.

I asked Gu Shi’an what had happened. It took him a long while to reply. [I accidentally dripped oil on it while eating, so I cut that part out.]

I was half-convinced by his explanation.

[Qingqing, do you like any flowers?] Gu Shi’an asked me.

[There’s an empty patch of ground in front of my courtyard, and I don’t know what to plant there.]

After thinking about it, I replied, [I don’t really have any flowers I like. If I had to say, the only thing I like is the ginkgo tree.]

[Ginkgo?]

[Yes. A ginkgo can live for thousands of years and witness the changes of history. When you touch its trunk, it’s almost like you’re speaking to someone from a thousand years ago.]

[Then I’ll plant a ginkgo tree. Maybe a hundred years from now, you’ll be able to see it too.]

I thought he was joking. The next day, he told me that he really had planted a ginkgo tree in his courtyard.

[Oh, right. I also carved a line of poetry on it. That way, when the time comes, you’ll know this is the tree I planted.]

I asked, [What poem?]

A line of neat characters then appeared in the notebook.

[If only your heart were like mine.]

My heart stirred faintly.

A young man’s feelings were always so honest and ardent, impossible to hide no matter how hard he tried.

After everything that had happened before, even someone as slow as me could understand Gu Shi’an’s feelings now.

And precisely because I understood, I couldn’t give him any response.

I closed the diary.

Although Gu Shi’an wasn’t my student, in my heart, he was no different from the students I taught.

It was perfectly normal for an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boy to develop a hazy affection for someone of the opposite sex he chatted with often, someone who had kept him company for over a year.

But even if he was confused, I couldn’t be.

There was a Teacher Lin at my school who taught the upper grades. He was handsome and always dressed in a clean, refined way, so in his second year after starting the job, a female student shoved a love letter into his hands with her cheeks bright red.

After Teacher Lin received that letter, he acted as if the sky had fallen.

When he came to work the next day, he had dark circles under his eyes and said to me, “Teacher Shen, I feel like my teaching career is about to end right here.”

He quickly came up with a countermeasure. It was as if he became a completely different person. From clean and refined, he turned slovenly and unkempt. He often went days without washing his hair, wore old-man undershirts, carried a thermos under his arm, spat wherever he pleased, and even picked at his feet in front of everyone during class. His image completely collapsed.

The good thing was that, from then on, no one ever handed him another love letter.

As for Gu Shi’an and me, our situation was even easier to handle.

The only medium between us was this diary.

As long as I persisted in not replying to Gu Shi’an for a while, his passion would slowly cool.

Maybe after half a year or a year, he would gradually forget all of this.

There were too many things between us, and far too much time. It was impossible from the start. So I shouldn’t give him any hope or influence the rest of his life.