Late at Night, I Dream of Old Friends

Yesterday I had a dream about my classmates from my first year of junior high.

A was one of my best friends (at that stage). I still remember how, in a questionnaire on WeChat Moments during our first year, he named me as a friend he had been talking to a lot lately. That made me happy for a long time. The last time I saw him was in Wudaokou, two and a half years ago;

B was our class monitor. We were all close then. The last time I saw him was at the zoo and in Wangfujing; he and A spent my fifteenth birthday with me;

I have not seen C for five and a half years, since the last time I set foot in the High School Affiliated to Beijing Jiaotong University on September 1, 2020. Yet happy memories of playing basketball and football together still come to mind from time to time.

But I fear that a sad, thick wall has come to stand between us.

After I left the affiliated school for that wretched place, Hengshui, we inevitably lost touch: I could only get hold of my phone once a month. It was months before they learned, when we finally spoke again, why I had disappeared.

If I had not gone to Hengshui, I would have played in the class basketball tournament with them, making an unforgettable memory together.

In my final year of junior high, we were given just one break during the semester before the high-school entrance exam. I was confined under Hengshui’s roof.

If I had not gone to Hengshui, I would have prepared for the entrance exam alongside them at the affiliated school’s south campus, a campus I have never visited, and made memories with teachers Huang and Han, who treated me so kindly.

When they entered high school they did not all end up at the same school either, but they still met up often, celebrated birthdays, and traveled together.

If I had not gone to Hengshui, would I have traveled with them too? Would anyone have celebrated my birthday?

After the gaokao, I really did perform better than expected. I posted the line “Though I was dull, I did in the end learn something” on WeChat Moments. My mother told me that C’s mother heard the news and congratulated me. As I remember him, B always knew how to keep study and leisure separate and was meticulous about serious matters. Unfortunately, he was not very satisfied with his gaokao result.

To be fair, had I stayed in Beijing, I might have become absorbed in all kinds of extracurricular activities, spent every day on my phone, and failed to achieve the score I have now. But what was taken from me was no small thing: many precious memories of youth, and this precious friendship that is so hard to recover. I have never brought up my score myself, yet they seem to think of it whenever they see me. Is that not the very sad, thick wall Lu Xun wrote about?

In my dream they rode their bicycles past my building. A had already ridden ahead. B recognized me the moment our eyes met and, together with C, greeted me warmly. I waved back happily, as if trying to call back our old memories and the friendship we once had…