Season of many dreams

Author: Xie Shuping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: Read the excerpt:
It was Friday again, and the weekend was approaching. The inspection must be tight, and there was also a meeting for class cadres in the afternoon. It was all her fault for staying up too late last night.
Yesterday, she had taken leave to go home for something. On the way, she passed by a bookstore and couldn’t resist stepping inside. Suddenly, she saw a book titled A Very Close Past written by Liu Jian’an. She had seen it displayed in the window before but had never picked it up. To her surprise, after flipping through just one page, she decided it was worth reading and bought it.
After dinner, she held it in her hands as if it were a treasure. The names of Zidan, Wenguo, and the Glass Young Master kept flashing before her eyes. “University students in the 1980s were really like this!” The more she read, the more she couldn’t put it down. She finally finished it at midnight, and even in her hazy dreams, she kept murmuring Zidan’s words: “But how can we forget this very close past? It’s not yesterday, nor the day before yesterday—it’s the time between today and yesterday. How precious this moment is for us! If we don’t review and summarize this journey, and instead, at the end, lament the distant past for a long time, what’s the point?”
May she not be late—so she thought, speeding her pace. At 7:10, the bell hadn’t yet rung, and she arrived on time. Before she could even get off the bus or react to what was happening, “Clunk,” she and the bus fell to the ground together. “Ouch!” The pain spread throughout her body, and she clearly felt many pairs of eyes watching her.
“Ugly, what a shame.” She cursed herself in her heart. She had clearly braked, but no—wait, she remembered. It was all because of that boy crossing the street. She had swerved to avoid him. She knew very well she had to stand up immediately. After struggling to lift her bicycle, she found the handlebar was crooked. Crooked? So be it. She stepped on it, and with a sproing, the chain slipped off, hitting her. In her current state, Xiao Han felt like crying but couldn’t.