You Are My Unforgettable Love

The car moved slowly along the streets.

Qiao Lian turned to look out of the window.

For the eight years that she had been away, there had been rapid changes.

Hence the places she used to know had become strange, although still familiar.

Lu Nanze did not say where he was taking her, neither did she ask. She made a note of where they were and tried to relate it to the Suzhou she remembered, so that she had an idea of where they were headed.

If she felt something amiss, she would call Shen Liangchuan or send him a message, so that he could come and rescue her.

After the car went around a curve and Qiao Lian saw the spicy soup stall, her body stiffened at once.

Upon noticing this, Lu Nanze asked, “What’s the matter? Do you remember something?”

Qiao Lian quickly said, “No, I just find this place familiar.”

It was certainly familiar, because beyond the stall, just straight ahead, was a high school.

When she saw the signboard, she was stunned.

This was her high school.

As this thought came to her, Lu Nanze drove the car up to the school entrance and parked by the kerbside. He opened the car door and looked at her. “This is where we went to school. I’ve brought you here to walk down the memory lane.”

Qiao Lian nodded.

She followed Lu Nanze as he entered the school grounds.

It felt like nothing in the school had changed. Except that where there used to be an empty piece of land, there were now a few blocks of hostels.

There were lessons at the moment, so pleasant sounds of students reading could be heard coming from some of the classrooms.

Qiao Lian found herself slightly distracted as she listened to the voices in unison. It felt like she was back in high school.

She heard Lu Nanze reminiscing, “Qiao Lian, do you remember? Our small group used to sit together.”

“You sat in the centre, I sat behind you and Sun Linan sat next to you on the same desk.”

“At the time, we did well in school and were a loud bunch. Do you remember? We had to go to extracurricular sessions in the evenings, so all of us stayed in the hostel. It was the first time we stayed away from our parents and we felt so much freedom. But what we hadn’t expected was that it would be even stricter in school. We used to be able to go out and have fun after school, but when we started staying at the hostel, we couldn’t even step out of campus.”

“Back then, you had a particular favorite cartoon that was released weekly. You had to watch it every Tuesday night. Hence, on that particular Tuesday night you had asked us to go to the internet cafe to pull an all-nighter.”

“All of us walked out of the school gate boldly, except you. You jumped out of your hostel room window on the second floor.”

As Lu Nanze spoke of this incident, they arrived at the hostel building where she had used to stay.

He pointed up at a window on the second floor and said slowly, “You see that? That was your hostel room. I still remember when Sun Tzi and I were waiting for you downstairs, and we heard some movements. We looked up and saw you jumping out. At that moment my heart jumped into my throat, fearful that you’d fall. Later on, seeing that you were alive and kicking, standing there before me, I was so mad at you.”

“Why were you so careless with yourself? Did you know how dangerous we thought it was as we saw you jump?”

As Lu Nanze droned on, Qiao Lian fell into a daze.