Chapter 13 The Box of Pens
Back in our sophomore year of high school, during weekend cram classes, Song Zhong Zheng and I were desk mates for a few short days.
He was aloof and distant then.
We barely spoke.
During breaks, a few girls gathered around my desk, chattering away.
I couldn't hide my crush.
At the time it was popular to write the name of the person you liked on paper with a pen until the ink ran out.
Then the wish would come true.
My friends told me about it.
Song Zhong Zheng, sitting right beside me, heard every word.
After school, he rode his bike home.
At a traffic light, he spotted me lingering outside a stationery shop.
It was a deep blue summer evening.
It had just rained, and the air still felt heavy with more to come.
He had already passed the intersection on his bicycle.
Yet he turned back.
I was carefully choosing pens.
He watched me from across the shelves.
When I tested one, I lightly wrote Ji Chuan's name.
Then I scratched it out.
In the end, I didn't buy any pen.
It felt too ridiculous.
And I knew no matter how many times I wrote it, my wish would never come true.
But what I didn't know was that Song Zhong Zheng bought them.
He bought an entire box of Pilot pens.
When he got home, he started writing the same sentence over and over:
I want to forget Lin Xia Yi.
He filled page after page with it.
Then he went back to buy more.
He kept writing from sophomore year through senior year.
Until after graduation, the pages went blank.
The thick A4 notebook and the empty box of pens were locked inside an iron case no one knew about.
Years later, I opened it.
Page after page, the handwriting neat, every character written with care.
I turned to the last part.
On the back of the densely filled pages, in the small remaining space, there was a new line.
The handwriting was more mature, sharper.
It said:
Forget it.
I can't do it at all.
The date was Valentine's Day in our sophomore year of college.
The day he flew back from abroad and drove to pick me up.
I took out a brand-new pen.
Quietly, behind that line, I wrote one sentence:
Happy marriage, Song Zhong Zheng.